HE LABORER 
AND 
HIS HIRE 



I. M. SHANKHN 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cfyip Copyright No 

ShelLHM0?£ 



-.^5 4- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



LABORER AND HIS HIRE 



By I. M. SHANKLIN 



NON IN SOLO 




PANE VIVIT HOMO 



WASHINGTON 

THE NEALE COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

431 Eleventh Street 

1900 



64545 



ILIOrtuy <<< CctnrcMaM 
j" 1 ** UW; Kitti/fcO 

OCT 22 1900 

Copyright antry 

SECCND COPY. 

Delivered te 

ORDE* DIVISION, 
NOV 21 l9Qfl 



^ 



i*- 



*x« 



Copyright, igoo, by 
I. M, SHANKLIN 



TO THE WORKERS 

Of America, and the world, this volume is hopefully dedicated 
by one of their number, 



THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I — Wages 7 

II— Land and Wages 35 

III — Monopoly and Wages 63 

IV — Land and Taxation 94 

V — Money Supply and Wages 120 

VI— Constitutional 142 

VII— Representative Government 165 

VIII — Lessons from History 185 

IX— Remedies 209 

X — Our Peculiar Case 237 

XI — Distribution 264 

XII — Industry Diversified 290 

XIII— The Path we Follow .... 312 

XIV— Opportunities and Results 336 



THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 



CHAPTER I. 



WAGES. 



Justice of wages has no fixed standard in money pay- 
ment. So long as wage payment in dollars and cents is 
to be regulated in amount by wage competition justice 
will remain unpracticed, for machines multiply with the 
multiplication of their human competitors and each new 
man competes as one, each new machine as thousands. 
Perhaps exact justice by the money payment system 
can be arrived at never. Wages, to be fair to producers, 
must correspond to production. The varying volume of 
production, one year with another, makes a fixed rate 
impossible, gauged by the unyielding standard of justice. 
A fixed rate is a slave rate, — food and clothes sufficient 
to make the slave profitable being both minimum and 
maximum. A fixed rate, such as this, not varying with 
the varying volume and value of products, has, since 
man has been hired by man, worked the industrial dis- 
aster of the class that receives wages. 

In an industrial society where labor seeks employment 
a basis for wage rates must be found in the values of 
production or labor will be the victim of competing 
captains of industry. When men and machines multiply 
they who employ both reap profits. In such a state the 
advantage is clearly with the hirer, while the hired are 
content to let one man in a thousand declare the ultimate 



8 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

liberality of wage-paying capital. This one in a thousand 
handles the products and the proceeds, and in a world of 
competition he serves himself first and chiefly. In a 
business order where survival is to the shrewdest the one 
who controls will survive. This is the order under which 
we live, and wages in money on the plan universal leaves 
of the labor product to labor enough to live on, and the 
employer, whatever his office may be, gets the rest. 
Employers, in an industrial order where survival is a 
question of destruction, being destroyed or destroying, 
look to their own interests. A surety for present profits 
they find in paying the lowest wages for which workers 
will consent to do the work. Year in and year out this 
plan no more results in the gains of employers than it 
does in the crippling of labor. It is the plan of selfishness 
that looks to individual gains only, shutting out the more 
general and more permanent prosperity a rational profit- 
sharing scheme would insure. Constantly it has been 
found to work the steady lowering of the wage rate in 
virtual disability of wage receivers to keep pace with the 
progress all about them. Constantly it more and more 
disadvantages wage receivers by the fact of human and 
machine competition. 

Wages in dollars and cents are but a part of the con- 
sideration; — as such merely they may be fair or unfair. 
Their efficiency is limited by the degree of material com- 
fort their possession will command. Their efficiency and 
fairness cannot in any sense be estimated by the yearly 
amount devoted to wages. Price conditions may more 
than nullify the good of a wage scale that appears 
high ; the volume of production may make an apparently 
high wage rate greatly disproportionate to the profits 
of capital. As a vast total of wages we are informed 
nothing worth considering as regards the condition of 
those receiving them. The world's social organizations, 



WAGES 9 

conditions of commerce in the regulations of prices, per- 
form regulations of expenditures that leave no reliable 
basis for calculations. Totals do not show the degree 
in which labor shares the increased values impossible of 
creation without labor. Totals do not argue the worth 
of labor — they merely assert the power of capital. 

It is the condition of those receiving wages that estab- 
lishes the justice or injustice of the wage rate. Not their 
condition as a world of workers, separate and apart as a 
class peculiar and incomparable; not their condition in 
comparison with the workers of other nations where 
the circumstances governing production must be wholly 
or in part dissimilar. Their relative advance in material 
prosperity with the increased and increasing aggregate 
of wealth is the essence of wage justice. 

A comparison of worker with worker in any field is 
profitless for wages in any occupation will grade always 
from the amount paid experts in responsible positions 
down to the stipend received by the machine-like opera- 
tive or the mere drudge. Comparing field with field is 
likewise barren. In all industrial systems based on com- 
petition wages will vary from the rate prevailing in in- 
dustries where there is comparative competition for 
workers to the rate paid by those industries where labor 
competes for opportunity to work. The balance will be 
quite evenly maintained, and all fields grow to the state 
where it is labor only that competes ; there are occupa- 
tions somewhat more sought than are others, but the 
crowding of one industry will never cause a permanent 
discrepancy to appear in the wage feature of that indus- 
try. There are sectional features as of population, that 
render some occupations less remunerative in crowded 
districts than are the same lines of work in regions where 
fewer people live per square mile. A seamstress in a 
thriving rural town can easily command three times the 



10 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

amount her sister in the sweat-shop of a metropolitan 
district will receive, and all occupations open to fullest 
competition as well as those subject to monopolization 
work to a wage decrease and an increase to those who 
control the product in that particular line considered. 
In a purely competitive system wealth will flow to those 
who have by nature or accident an advantage over those 
competitors not strong enough, not skillful enough to 
grasp the opportunity. For the same reason wages will 
not be measured by how much a man can do so much as 
by how much another man whose needs may be more 
pressing will do the same work. This is the essence of 
competition. The same spirit moves competition be- 
tween those who control labor's products, and while it 
continues, in a manner lessens the evils of wage compe- 
tition. But in this land controllers no longer compete 
for the markets ; they combine against the markets and 
the evils of double competition fall upon the wage world. 
Wages in this way become minimum, prices maximum, 
keeping, of course, within the limits of possibilities in 
both vital features. 

To compare national wage rates is to compare degrees 
of civilizations. Governments, in the ideas they repre- 
sent, are as indicative of wages as they are of other ideas 
vital in importance in the lives of the people. The con- 
dition of English workers, in average, compared with 
slave labor in the heart of Africa, the condition of Ameri- 
can laborers contrasted with native labor in China, pre- 
sents differences easily accounted for. To assume from 
this that English and American workers share to the high- 
est they should in wealth possession is to eliminate all edu- 
cational superiorities from the consideration. To assert 
that inasmuch as the condition of American and English 
workers is in advance of those in these other two typical 
districts, and, therefore, does not call for betterment 



WAGES 11 

is the non-recognition of all worth as a factor in a 
nation's greatness and progress. 

The only sure test of a wage rate is the economic 
status of wage earners as reflected by their social life. 
This stamps a wage rate as just and honorable or beg- 
garly and unfair. If this rate has kept pace with profit 
rates the former is just. If the homes of workers show 
an increase in comfort comparative to increase of luxu- 
ries in homes of those on the other side of the dividing 
line, the wage rate is fairer than we know. If of the 
total wealth increase wage earners' increase keeps pace 
with wage payers', the wage rate is on a basis fair to all. 
If the lives of toilers show the same advancement in edu- 
cational, moral and artistic opportunities the wealthy 
classes enjoy, the state of society is a right one. 

The world, roughly divided, is made up of two 
economic classes. These two classes are the employers 
and employes. There are harsher terms sometimes used 
to designate divisions of the first class, the division that 
consumes without in any way, direct, contributing to 
production. But sufficient for the purpose of the pres- 
ent consideration is it to make the general division of the 
total of humanity. 

The man of ease whose income is an inheritance may 
in no direct way contribute to the production or the 
wage fund of the world. Yet in the office of consumer 
he is indirectly both producer and employer. The de- 
mands of his life for productions stimulate to the extent 
of the demands, work in those industries preparing the 
diverse articles he consumes. This production all believe 
to be good and while such a consumer may be of no 
direct value to the industrial world, he is not the 
altogether useless character he is sometimes pictured. 
While the industrial scheme rests upon its present basis 



12 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

he cannot be, but is, with his class, a qualified blessing, 
as are wars, conflagrations and destructive storms whose 
works are likewise to consume production without in- 
creasing it in return. This destruction, as we say, makes 
work and wages, and work and wages are the hope of 
workers. Theoretically and ethically he and his class 
are not only useless but positively detrimental to indus- 
trial society, absolute drones, consuming only. In an 
ideal industrial state where reward went to workers in 
the degree of production the class would be an unquali- 
fied injury, because as non-producers they would fail 
of an income and so be forced to express thievery, beg- 
gary or starvation. By some they have been assigned 
to the class of thieves and beggars in consideration of 
their comparative failure as producers and their relative 
destructiveness as consumers who do not also produce. 
This classification is true on the moral grounds that the 
right to material goods is the recompense of labor in 
some field. While products continue to be divided by 
any other standard of apportionment, the non-producer 
who holds wealth in any form is free to command the 
products of others' labors without being charged with 
mendicancy or thievishness. Wealth is exchanged for 
wealth the world over. The manner of accumulation 
in the cases of nearly all great possessions is usually 
flagrantly unjust, as no man can in an allotted life span 
accumulate a great fortune by honest methods as great 
fortunes are estimated in this day. But while the division 
of wealth creations continues as we experience it, inher- 
itors and innocent sharers in the accumulations common 
on one side have no greater share in the wrong than 
those on the other side who suffer from the unequal 
division. 

The community of individuals is responsible for the 
state of society in any given sphere. In the distribution 



WAGES 13 

of wealth as prevailing practices accomplish it, workers 
as well as hirers are responsible. For so much as the 
charge of moral wrong is worth when entered against 
those who succeed in getting control of production, the 
robbers are but a degree more culpable than the robbed. 
The man who would without objection hand over his 
valuables to a highwayman and, who knowing the high- 
wayman's haunts, persistently travels by that road every 
time he would transport treasures, would soon cease to 
hold the sympathy and confidence of friends. Our distri- 
bution of products is no less than robbery in a material 
as well as a moral sense, but if the robbed would come to 
understand that they are parties to the robbery they 
would cease to call names, cease importuning a just 
division and proceed to accomplish what they desire. If 
I hold a purse common to a community and in which the 
funds of that community are deposited, I am responsible 
for the funds so entrusted to me. If I negligently leave 
this purse where a thief can come at it, or entrust it to 
other hands and it is stolen and its contents confiscated, 
I would by any court of justice in the land and in the 
judgment of all sane people be called a party to the 
theft, even though my own money should be in the purse, 
and I should forever be deprived of its use, or the use 
of an equivalent of its use. I would have assisted in the 
robbery of others, even if by that robbery I myself had 
been despoiled of wealth. Any other member of the com- 
munity who had been selected as guardian of the purse 
and who had permitted its theft by insecure guarding 
would be likewise responsible and equally guilty. If 
the community took all responsibility for the safety of 
the common fund and then by common consent agreed 
to deposit the purse holding it in a public and unguarded 
place, and thieves made way with it, the community 
would be a party to the steal, and each individual mem- 



14 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

ber of the community having suffered himself to be 
stolen from would also have helped in the defraudment 
of every other member of the community. The thief who 
carried away the purse would have been guilty of direct 
robbery, every member of the community would have 
been guilty of indirect robbery. If the community had 
suffered in this way year after year, and the only measures 
of safety resorted to were those of protest, name-call- 
ing and an endeavor to get the thief to at least employ 
labor that wages might be forthcoming for the purse 
the following years, its members would by other com- 
munities have names applied to them expressing mental 
states as weak and irresponsible as the moral tone. A 
beneficent government would build a secure wall around 
that community, appoint medical experts and attendants 
to save the confusion of transferring the whole popula- 
tion to established retreats for the insane. 

When the community, grown tired of such a lack- 
wisdom policy, causes the treasure to be securely 
guarded for the use and enjoyment of its members, the 
thief will cease to steal. 

The class of employes embraces all of a population 
not included with the employers. It is true many men 
comprise within the scope of their individual activities 
the purposes and rewards of many groups in minute 
classifications. But all workers whose reward is daily 
sustenance are in this sense employes, and many more 
may be classed as such when their earnings, carefully 
husbanded, furnish a little beyond daily needs, and that 
little is added to the savings bank account of those for- 
tunate enough to be able to provide against future ina- 
bility to produce. In the correct phrase of the scientific 
classifications, a farmer who does all the work on his 
land may be both capitalist and laborer, his proceeds 



WAGES 15 

named profits and wages, and if desirable interest and 
many other terms may be added to express his relation 
to himself and his returns for labor he performs. But 
all hair-splitting technicalities aside, he occupies as much 
the position of employe to the man who pays him in- 
herited money for potatoes as the farmer himself may be 
employer to his shoemaker or to the lad he may find 
it necessary to hire in the busy season of the year. Not 
that the consumer covenants with him at the period of 
spring planting for so many bushels of potatoes at so 
much per bushel, or that even if he did would it consti- 
tute the accepted relation of employer and employe, but 
that in the matter of return for labor the farmer occupies 
the place of wage receiver. In the world field of profits 
and pay he cannot be called an employer. 

The most explicit division that can be made in an 
effort to classify the participants of the industrial world 
into a class of employers and employes will be found 
in the line that separates the occupations favored by 
nature and legislation, singly and combined, from those 
less aided by the first, unassisted and sometimes ham- 
pered by the last. Some industries, by their nature and 
the controlling industrial orders, are less competitive and 
possess advantages over others which are competitive 
to the lowest point and are stripped of the little natural 
strength inhering by the conditions that favor the first. 
Persons engaged in these disadvantaged industries and 
the wage-receiving numbers of the land comprise the 
army of employes in the classifications made. All outside 
this, who are self-supporting, are in the other class, or 
class of employers. The division is made in considera- 
tion of the growing inequalities of wealth distribution. 

The tastes and inclinations, the degree of education 
the laborer possesses, affects the justice of the wage rate. 



16 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

This may appear a hard standard on the part of em- 
ployers, whereby to regulate wages ; it is certainly hard 
enough for all, under existing conditions. But it is the 
true standard, the only one that admits of progress on 
the part of the people. It is true the law of recompense 
here outlined provides for a constant growth in wage 
proportions until absolute justice between the producer 
and the controller has been reached; it would not be 
just otherwise. The higher the wage scale the higher 
will be raised the standard of personal worth in the ranks 
of employes; a rise in either virtue or wages calls for a 
rise in the other. It is a necessity which must be met. 
Depraved labor accepts low wages, lowers wages, .drag- 
ging down with the wage rate the moral tone of the 
wage-receiving world. The general moral and intel- 
lectual status of any class will be advanced with increased 
opportunities for cultivation, will fall as necessity com- 
pels the utmost strain in the winning of bread. It is 
no cruelty to deprive the voluptuary of his accustomed 
rose-scent in the bath; his delicately educated sense 
misses it and he suffers in his weak way. But to deprive 
an intelligent man of his daily paper or scientific or 
thought educative book or magazine is an actual injury 
to him, for in the failure of his highest development in- 
tellectually, he loses, and society loses with him. He 
suffers and the world suffers with him. 

The preservation of the worth of the worker is an 
essential in the consideration of wage rates. The idea 
is not Quixotic, visionary, Utopian. It is very reasona- 
ble and practicable, — it is imperative. Selfishness, dili- 
gently applying the muck rake cannot grasp its beauty 
for he is looking in the wrong place. Truth, looking to 
the future, wisdom, avoiding the mistakes of the past, 
unite in the demand. It is justice of wages we must 
consider and not what at present exists as the common 



I 



WAGES 17 

wage scale — pay as little as possible, no matter what 
man goes to the devil, no matter what nation goes with 
him. Plenty of laborers make cheap wages, as plenty of 
cattle make cheap beef, while laborers and cattle are sub- 
ject to prevailing control. This has been the standard 
of the past wherein gold measured men; to-day when 
they are measured largely by promissory notes the wage 
rate determines that those who eat their daily bread be- 
tween the same suns that saw it earned cannot be over- 
particular as to terms, a half loaf being so infinitely better 
than no bread. Let them be thankful for favors, however 
small, and not aspire to the luxury of brain and soul 
food. This age-accepted wage rate, this gold measure, 
promissory-note measure, is very much outgrown by 
the race, except that portion of the race known as hirers. 
By those classed as hired it has grown to the point of an 
entire repudiation, only lacking the final dismissal in 
practice. 

In a question of economy to employers a trained South 
Sea Islander would do the work of an American laborer 
for victuals, a kennel to sleep in and enough money in 
wages or exchange for clothes and ornament, the former 
a breech-cloth, weather permitting, the latter abundantly 
supplied by beads and rings of iron and brass. If wage 
earners could be educated down to the primitive aspira- 
tions of the aborigine the wage question could be ad- 
justed on the present basis of compensation — for a year, 
perhaps. By the end of that time or before, the wage- 
paying portion of the land would advise a reduction of 
the living expenses of the laborer, otherwise a lessening 
of the amount of cloth used in the model livery, and cast 
about for a cheaper class of beads and rings to place 
before him ; all in the interests of labor. If labor declined 
to be interested and stubbornly refused, a reduction of 
wages would call attention to the necessity for speedy 
2 



18 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

retrenchment. It is the method now used, and we boast 
of the highest priced and most intelligent labor in the 
world. How long this boast will remain good at the rate 
of retrogression we now pursue can only be predicted 
by the aid of a sure knowledge as to how rapidly a like 
backward movement is being made by the rest of the 
world. We know it to be what we claim for it only by 
comparison and not that the terms express justice in our 
employment of them. 

Fortunately for the world and civilization, the prog- 
ress that has been made along other lines and which is 
beginning to be felt in social relations, predicts a fairer 
adjustment of the cause and condition of the world's 
toilers. The cause is too much ignored, the condition 
now too unfair. In its broadest sense, the children of 
men must some day enter into the inheritance which is 
their due, — a broader, freer, higher state of life. We are 
moving away in thought from the bondage of South 
Sea Islanderism, and actuality in deed will follow the 
thought movement. Progress is not at a standstill in the 
higher life forms of civilization, although the energy 
embodied may be only that which engendered the cause 
of movement. The result will appear more fully later. 
Time is required, but the change is sure, whether near 
or far the direction given the movement must determine. 
Ultimate justice will result to all. All life and progress 
were in vain otherwise. 

The best earth affords, or can be made to yield, should 
be shared by all in their deserts. Since there is sunshine 
it was never meant man should live in the shadow. Since 
there is solid earth and a carpet of grass over it, it was 
never meant he should live in the filth and poison of the 
slough. An equal share in the opportunities this life 
provides for expansion and development according to 
ability and application is the natural right and recom- 



WAGES 19 

pense of all. A considerable wage fund to draw from, 
but then, nature is not so scant of supplies that she en- 
tails sufferings for physical necessities on any, neither is 
she so devoid of kindness that her treasures are to be 
denied a single creature. There is fullness waiting for all. 
It is our perversion of natural laws that calls forth hard- 
ships in the family of man. 

Wages in all industrial systems depend upon distribu- 
tion primarily. If the distribution of wealth is justly 
governed, trade, and in turn production, is stimulated 
and the rapid exchange of commodities beneficially 
affects all departments of industry and wages go up. 
Both forms of wages, as money and as wealth in the 
hands of his fashioners, appreciate, the former in amount, 
the latter in exchange or selling values. When distribu- 
tion is unfairly made wages decline, for the wage-work- 
ing world being discriminated against have less with 
which to command products, less in money wages, less 
in value-of-products wages, and the wage workers con- 
stituting the great mass of people, their suffering not 
only means the suffering of many but spreads to the 
most extended limits of the industrial world. The de- 
cline in value-of-products wages bears more heavily on 
the indirect wage workers than does the fall in money 
wages cripple direct wage workers. Of course there are 
classes of workers whoce money wages cannot be re- 
duced and the workers live and labor; but consumers 
are many times and in many fields so limited in power 
of demand that those who work for indirect wages are 
stranded by decrease in values occasioned by the decline 
of prices. These declines in prices are brought about 
by decrease of demand and by competition in the line 
of wage rates. This uncertainty of results in the fields 
where wages are the products of application and where 



20 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

rewards are meager and opportunities limited owing to 
combinations of causes, produces crowdings toward the 
money-wage paying industries by the unfortunates 
pushed aside and out of the ranks of workers in these 
branches. The action and reaction of low money wages 
and low value wages operate to drag down constantly 
the wage rate universal. 

One dollar a day, when the question of direct wages 
narrows down to one of financial equations, is better pay 
under some commercial conditions than would be two 
dollars under other conditions, just as one-dollar values 
are better for indirect wage workers in some states of 
the markets of the world than would be two-dollar values 
in other states. We have heard this idea expressed 
many times, and because it is so manifestly and emphati- 
cally true good will come of repeating it. In the light 
of the labor extremist or capital extremist, it is the 
recompense of the workers by decreasing that increases 
the profits of the hirers, or the increase of the recompense 
that decreases the profits of the hirers. Increase and de- 
crease of wages and profits we are coming to believe are 
merely relative, but the terms are used to express the 
relation, the distribution of wealth and the creation of 
values. Experience and theory go to show that a more 
equitable distribution increases the general and indi- 
vidual prosperity of all engaged in production, but the 
adoption of profit-sharing schemes is so rare that their 
beneficial effects cannot at present enter into the situa- 
tion as a whole. They have proven profitable as an 
illustration as to what can be done. They point the way 
as to what may be. In the consideration of our industrial 
scheme and its characteristic results they have no part. 

If wage earners can command more of the necessities 
and comforts of life on a wage scale of one dollar a day 
than they can on a scale of two dollars, only the long- 



WAGES 21 

eared, mock philosophers who make the most noise with 
the least music and who argue the most with least 
reason, will contend that the latter state is the better. 
The price of products is one-half the wage question in 
the point of effectiveness. Competition in the wage mar- 
ket is the other half in the point of proportional sharing 
in wealth creations. Both of these rest upon distribu- 
tion, and in connection with them may be considered 
many features, some of which man cannot control, as 
climatic and racial peculiarities, others of which he in 
his socialized efforts is directly responsible for as im- 
pediments or encouragements by law, money supply, etc. 

A nation is not better than its greatest class. The 
greatest class, in economic importance, reflects the 
justice or injustice of economic conditions. The standard 
of wages in our country is below the line of respecta- 
ble living rates in many industries and is approaching 
that in many others. The effort then is, the elevation of 
the standard, not its lowering, not fixing it at what it 
now is. 

The community is responsible for its own treasure. 
The nation is responsible for its own condition. There 
are enemies to justice and common rights in all societies. 
It rests with the particular society in which particular 
efforts are made to preserve individual and social rights 
as to whether those efforts succeed. Liberty, in its 
proper sense, is the blessing of those who acquire and 
maintain it. 

The modifying and lessening effects of intemperance 
and other dissipations, bearing on the efficiency of wages 
after they have passed into the hands of the worker, 
the destruction of wage-earning ability by indulgences 
of these kinds, is of no real import in the consideration. 
While such practices are deplorable in effect on the quali- 



22 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

fications of laborers they are the results of privations 
rather than the causes. The limitations to fullest devel- 
opments entailing physical stuntings and moral diseases 
are produced by the economic misdirections from which 
the world has suffered always. The well-paid worker, 
secure in his place, has neither time nor inclination to 
the brutish indulgences. The underpaid worker, whose 
physical being is deprived of proper nutriment, craves 
the satisfaction of natural tastes grown perverted by 
abuse, and he resorts to drink and even worse. While 
these unhappy abandonments add misery to misery and 
in all forms aggregate yearly an enormous sum in money 
squandered and energy misdirected, it must be remem- 
bered of this great total, frequently said to represent so 
much of the misery of wage workers as a class, that the 
wage aggregate is represented in proportion only. Few 
even estimate this proportion. Our annual consumption 
of intoxicants and other harmful luxuries is bunched into 
the appalling total and labor is invited to swear off and 
join our plutocracy. 

If those who attribute to such causes the destitution 
of workers, wish to be temperately honest in dealing 
with the drink feature of the case, they would remember 
and make mention of the great percentage of this annual 
waste which the people who store costly drinks in their 
cellars should be credited with, and the amount ex- 
pended by fashionable clubs. The same distinction 
would accompany the reckonings of tobacco totals. In 
the indulgence of all vices, the by far most expensive 
form and proportion is represented by the rich and well- 
to-do. This is left untouched by the claims of temper- 
ance and economic advocates who seek to fasten on 
labor's profligacy and improvidence the sole cause of 
misery in the class. The numberless ways in which 
labor's stipend is being continually decreased, the count- 



WAGES 23 

less methods by which, when received, it is made to con- 
tribute to the vested and monopolizing powers of classes 
is laboriously and sedulously ignored. 

In a general estimate human nature varies but little, 
and vice in one does not cease to be vice when indulged 
by another. By what right other than of financial ability 
to so indulge the rich are exempt from criticism for 
practices lamented and lamentable in labor is not shown. 
That this class by that amount squanders money that 
could be devoted to good works, to the increase of the 
wage fund, is not noted. On the part of those who seek 
to fasten on labor's mode of living the cause of wretched- 
ness, nothing is said, no word written of the millions 
spent annually by the rich in foolish and harmful dissi- 
pations. Could the case by any process of reasoning 
be reversed for consideration, could the advocate of 
existing relations by any process of investigation be made 
to see the injustices abounding in these relations, he 
might say much of the wisdom-lacking policy that scat- 
ters these great sums in the dissipations that engross the 
time and energies of our aristocracies of wealth. Labor 
put to the treadmill that production may be squandered 
by those who control it is frequently pronounced philan- 
thropic. A half-million-dollar ball in the bitterest season 
of want, and other like extravagances, a contribution to 
a queen's jubilee representation entailing expenditures 
large enough to maintain the gold reserve, and follies 
of like nature whose numbers grow daily, pass as devices 
to put money in circulation in times we are said to be on 
the verge of bankruptcy. It is defended and even praised 
as such by a portion of the press, which is natural, for 
plutocracy does not lack prints. It is defended and 
even praised by the pulpit in places, which is surprising, 
for we do not look for a defense of money rule from sup- 
posed exponents of the Christian gospel. It is defended 



24 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

and even praised by labor, in part, which is hopeless, for 
who shall save labor if labor be passive, apathetic, grasp- 
ing at crumbs when bread might be had, — what salt has 
been found to preserve the body, the soul being lacking? 

Money could also be put in circulation through 
medium of open shops with operatives compensated 
in a fair degree, for the wealth forms they fashion, and so 
wages would expand. Money could be put in circulation 
in the carrying forward of all branches of industry with 
a full force of well-paid workmen. Money could be put 
in circulation by the prosecution of public works giving 
employment to thousands of idle men, to the double 
benefit of society. Other devices fitted to the same pur- 
pose could be projected and carried out whereby money 
that is locked up in bank or treasury vaults, and with- 
out which, on a money basis of exchange, we are miser- 
able, could be circulated. The limited dissipations of 
wage workers also put money in circulation, yet their 
efforts in that line do not receive the laudations accorded 
revelers in Anglomaniaism and other popular amuse- 
ments of our wealth aristocracy. 

Efforts at reform in the condition of workers through 
the stimulation of private economy and encouragement 
of moral habits are praiseworthy. The growth of good 
practices 'has fitted labor to more successfully cope with 
adverse circumstances and to incline relations to an ad- 
vancing standard of justice. But the work of moral 
growth must be universal to call forth fullest benefits, 
and there is much more than merely this embraced in the 
bonds of employer and employe that demands reform, — 
more than can be accomplished through the improve- 
ment of habits in employes. 

Some of the barriers in the path of reform, hitherto, 
and still too much so, have been found in our reverence 



WAGES 25 

for existing, forms, our fear of appearing radical. We 
have shunned radical measures to meet radical condi- 
tions, and we love existing forms more than we love our- 
selves. Back of these things is found party loyalty, a 
good thing in its purity, a false and dangerous thing in 
abuse. Political parties make the history of a country, 
but if their power ceased when their virtue ceased history 
would be written quite otherwise in many instances. 
Partisan organizations take positions on questions 
strongly affecting the material prosperity of the people, 
the parties usually being controlled by politicians who 
are in turn dominated by the powers that oppose the 
people. In this way our system of representative govern- 
ment has been made the instrument of injury to the peo- 
ple who trust in it. Leaders know that, in the main, 
voters will stand by the action of conventions, by plat- 
forms, by broken faith often, and the trap is helped to 
preparation by those for whom it is designed. For 
these reasons political parties indulge corruptions, and 
our circumstances as a body become more straitened 
yearly. Political independence of the individual is the 
basis of all freedom in the spheres where individuals 
unite to form a society. Many motives and forces may 
have contributed to the securing of political freedom, 
but the exercise of that freedom in the choice of policies 
in state and all departments of social life will alone 
secure rights. 

When we reach a state of personal political independ- 
ence in which the voters demand such laws of elected 
representatives as are desired with the penalty for broken 
faith to be party disruption, the tricks in politics that 
betray the people will cease. Anomalies and absurdities, 
now plentiful, will cease. We are wedded to false ideals 
as to the relations of the two classes of society, and by 
our following of false ideals we reach false positions. 



26 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

One anomaly, absurdity, and thereby false ideal in 
industrial relations is represented in the claim that a tax 
regulation increasing the living expenses of every one 
coming under its provisions will increase wages, will 
benefit all. A part of our people believe that to double 
these expenses is the surest way to prosperity. Another 
part believe, if there be truth in party platforms, that the 
labor question would receive a quieting influence if the 
taxes on the daily expenses of labor were reduced in 
part. The first believe that, as a burden is a good thing, 
a double burden is a doubly good thing. The second 
accept the doctrine that a small burden is lighter than a 
heavy one and a small injustice more bearable than a 
great one. The one believing a burden to be necessary, 
arguing that an added burden is a blessing; the other 
convinced that as a heavy load is unfair a light load is 
beneficial. Of course it is all done for the laboring man, 
with his necessities in clothing, machinery and all man- 
created forces to his work doubled or increased in price 
thereby. He is to be prospered by the operation of such 
laws ; the one who receives money wages by the increas- 
ed ability of employers to pay high wages, the one who 
receives value of products wages by the increased power 
of purchase on the part of those who work for employers 
whose ability to pay high wages has been increased by 
the working of the tax scheme ! Sweet promise of en- 
during faith to be written in the sand ; highest sounding 
note of joy to be struck from strings of wood. Never 
trick, fraud nor red-handed wrong in the world of politics 
in this glorious union of ours but is tagged with the 
triple-plated passport to public favor of "good to the 
laboring man." He is the subject for experiments, the 
basis of taxation, the power to be catered to before elec- 
tion. He is indispensable on election day and necessary 



WAGES 27 

to the production of the proudest issue of our institutions 
— the hundred times millionaire. 

Another part remedy in theory, part irritant in prac- 
tice, is found in the changing treatment of the currency 
disorders. Other hoped-for aids in the establishment 
of right in our industrial scheme have been sought in 
arbitrary regulations of hired to hirer. Regulations in 
hours, age and other matters upon which it should be 
unnecessary to legislate, have been recognized as essential 
to the protection of labor and the good of society. All 
superficial features have been considered. Tariffs that 
add to the cost of labor's living, trusts in the control of 
distribution and production resultant from tariffs and 
monopolizations, unsettled currency policy and restric- 
tions of the money volume and many other of the total 
relations of employer and employe are in any one part 
inimical to the prosperity of universal industry and 
active elements to discord. Taken together, we have the 
cause, in part, of our present state of chronic disorder 
and lack of industrial stability. These create perplexi- 
ties more than enough in themselves, but they can never 
be more than a part of the difficulty, however much they 
of themselves tend to business fluctuations. They are 
evils growing out of a primary wrong to all classes of 
society. 

We might abolish tariffs; we might abolish monopo- 
lies, trusts, at the penalty of something stronger than 
we now devise — so strong that they would stay abol- 
ished. There is a crime against the country the punish- 
ment for which is severe enough to discourage its indul- 
gence, and under it might with a great deal of reason 
come those cases where the interests of the people are 
so seriously affected. We might settle our financial 
folly by application of the wisest regulations to be made 
and dispose of all other superficial causes of distress, and 



28 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

yet under all these wise orders oppression would con- 
tinue and inequalities in conditions and results still num- 
ber as victims the greater part of our people. The 
causes complained against are themselves results. To 
suppress a result in one place is to cause it to appear in 
another while the source of the result exists. When a 
number of ills afflict a people, no one remedy will avail 
for all and cure so long as an essential is lacking. 

While the specialists who have a solitary result in view 
for the abolition of the multitudes of evils from which we 
suffer prescribe for their lessening or destruction free or 
taxed necessities, white, yellow, or a union of money 
metals, and what not, they work in a single sphere. 
While they ask for one of these, or all in various combi- 
nations with the remedies of other specialists, they ignore 
one fundamental fact, and this the fact that so long as 
opportunities are unequally distributed equality in con- 
dition, or the elements to such equality, will not result. 
Justice is never the outgrowth of continued wrong, 
equality is not the offspring of inequality. To attempt 
the destruction of results without annihilating their 
source is supremest futility. To make the effort is to 
recognize the superficial and artificial conditions in our 
industrial relations and society without the courage to 
strike where the blow is needed. To see the glaring 
wrongs existent is unavoidable; to trace them back to 
the nearest manifestation of cause and seek to check 
them there is vain. To look for relief to follow such 
measures as a permanent following while the great na- 
tural conditions and the necessity for justice and equality 
of first relations between those who employ labor and 
those who supply it, between man and man, between 
society and man, between man and society are ignored 
or unseen, is maddest folly. Folly from which we have 



WAGES 29 

suffered and do suffer. Folly that has caused the world 
of mankind the major part of all the unhappiness that 
links the world to bedlam. We have attempted to build 
on the fundamentals of error and have hoped to build to 
felicity. We have accepted the limitations in the primary 
essentials the world has always labored under and have 
then looked for completeness. We have closed our eyes 
and shut up our understanding against the truths of 
nature. But unseen and ignored items of nature's pro- 
visions and demands do not compose or absent them- 
selves to oblige our ignorance or defer to our temerity. 
Right does not result from wrong so we suffer from the' 
results of mistakes we have committed and continue to 
make, as the world has suffered before this day and must 
continue to do while following the path of the past. 

We must cease to unsee and ignore the causes of our 
unhappiness. The choice is change or ruin. If we reject 
straw, our taskmistress, nature, will compel us to make 
brick without it. Nature does not condone our neglect 
of her just laws ; she will not, cannot, save us from the 
just punishment of the consequences of our own folly 
and we cannot save ourselves except by change. From 
the beginning man has run counter to nature's laws and 
not nature but man has been wrecked by it. Natural 
laws neglected have a way of asserting themselves not 
always pleasant, and because we are in part ignorant of 
the origin of our troubles we feel we are roughly dealt 
with if in our efforts at social results two and two fail to 
make five, or if following the orders of the past we fail 
to arrive at the success the past failed to demonstrate. 

A people can live without trade. Witness the savage 
beast-men whose personal efforts at root digging or 
fish taking suffice to supply their every want, the effort 
of the individual representing his sole support. Ex- 
change here is of labor for the articles of nature's pro- 



30 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

vision which are found necessary ; nature and labor com- 
plete the terms. A people can live if to one man is 
granted the sole privilege of manufacturing toothpicks 
and to another is given the monopoly of pounding all 
the sand of the seashore into all the rat holes of earth. 
They can live without gold or silver, free coinage, 
limited coinage, wildcat currency or bullion. They can 
and will live with or without these, with or without tariffs, 
trusts, unsettled or one-sided currency. Just how happy 
or unhappy they would be can be ascertained by experi- 
ment. By experiment we have found that tariffs, trusts 
and halved currency make not for the happiness and 
prosperity of our people. We have run the list through 
in a multitude of combinations in the past forty years, 
beginning by doubling the living expenses of the people 
and have now reached a point where we allow them only 
half as much money to meet their obligations assumed 
under and unavoidable to that false standard. We have 
thrown in various etceteras in the way of privileged 
preyings, and still we are not happy. We are seeking 
relief yet, and that along the very lines of action we have 
pursued that brought us to where we are. Our pauper 
list is swelling and the forces in our national life that are 
swelling at the same rate of increase are the perplexities 
of labor and the treasure chambers of our plutocracy. 
What a devil's trinity that is — pauperism, labor perplexi- 
ties and plutocracy! One to which neither pagan nor 
infidel can bow, and yet we sit serene, or at the strongest 
only mildly protestant, under its domination. We have 
tried everything but common sense, have conformed to 
every design but that of nature and have arrived at this. 
To one who had followed but that phase of the situa- 
tion the natural wonder would be why we should be 
called upon to pass special enactments looking to the 
preservation of workers' rights. Why find it necessary 



WAGES 31 

to provide laws regulating wages, laws restricting the 
encroachments of enemies on the rights of labor, would 
be irrepressible queries suggested by a following of that 
one feature. And yet another harder to answer, Why 
should there be enemies to labor and what industrial 
situation makes war between its classes? There were 
no need of such precautions, such regulations, had not 
the workers been deprived of primitive dues ; these with- 
held, there is nothing that can compensate. The occa- 
sions for solicitude on behalf of the greater part of the 
race would not have arisen had not the world, workers 
as well as oppressors, entered into a league to deprive 
the former of their power, which taken, leaves them at 
the mercy of the latter. There would be no enemies in 
the industrial world if the forces had not been divided 
on lines that make the partial success of one class the 
partial or complete failure of the other class. Nature did 
not create a state in which the largest number of human- 
kind are inferior, unable to care for themselves. That 
they do not find themselves the controlling power in 
their socialized life is due to impositions that have grown 
from permitted impositions, so that the strong have 
become weak, the weak strong. Hence, laws limiting 
the hours of a work day. Hence, laws looking to the 
regulation of wages. Hence, laws vainly endeavoring 
tc keep the field open to men where only children's 
wages are paid. Hence, in short, protection, in its 
various forms, to the worker. Incompetents, shirkers, 
without intelligence to insure self-preservation, whose 
habits, lives, must be regulated that they suffer not and 
that the world thrive because of their regulated control 
and protection. This is the estimate to be made of the 
principal body of American workers by one unfamiliar 
with conditions and hearing only of the measures for pro- 



32 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

tection and defense against the rest of the industrial 
commonwealth. 

The natural factors entering into the problem, the 
intricacies of which are largely of man's contribution, 
are as yet to be considered and allowed their proper 
development. There are a great many of these crowded 
out to make way for man's theories, experiments and 
greeds. One natural and necessary factor to human life 
and progress, and which embraces all forms of develop- 
ment in either, is land. It is the only one so far that has 
been subject to conditions of monopolization, doubtless 
because it is the only one that can be. If science makes 
possible the private ownership and control of other ele- 
ments to physical existence, in the future other weights 
may be added to those already encumbering all those 
on the outerside of the monopoly ring. But sufficient 
unto the present day are the evils now to be contended 
with. 

Land is necessary to life in all the higher forms of 
physical manifestation. Man cannot exist beyond the 
briefest time without it and its products. His habitat is 
land; his food is the product of land and the product 
of land's product; his clothing is the product of land 
directly or indirectly. For these reasons if he is shut 
away from land and its products he must cease to live. 

Free access to land is necessary to prosperity. In pro- 
portion to actual needs one man will require as much 
land for use as another; he will require as much food, 
clothing, and as large a house. In a primitive organiza- 
tion of society one will require as much land to range 
over for game, as much to cultivate vegetables in, as 
much for every use, as another. In the more socialized 
community the products of the diverse industrial ma- 
chine will be demanded by all men in about equal 
quantities if power of command be equal. In the indus- 



WAGES 33 

trial community one man's demand for land will vary 
with the demand for land by another as the nature of 
his calling may require more or less. The amount of 
land demanded by his necessities on the part of a mer- 
chant will be less than that demanded by a farmer. The 
two businesses by their natures require about the same 
in any normal enterprise in either distinct line. But the 
main fact is that each must have land for the prosecution 
of his business, the farmer acres and the merchant square 
feet. They will each, probably, consume for their per- 
sonal needs, the products of like areas, but in carrying on 
their separate enterprises they must have more or less 
than this amount of land. By nature being entitled to so 
much each, by business they have unequally divided the 
proportion of the two, each taking what he needs. The 
land is theirs by right of necessity, the division is made 
to conform to the separate needs of the two. 

Private control of land embraces all the elements of 
oppression to be found in any state of industrial servi- 
tude. Land being a necessity to life, control of land is 
control of life. Free access to land being necessary to 
prosperity, control of land is control of the industrial 
life of those who inhabit land. That land is necessary to 
life is no more incontrovertible as a statement than that 
free access to land is necessary to prosperity and that 
land control includes the power of control over labor. 
The first may be at first thought somewhat more self- 
evident than the other two, but once its truth being 
established in the mind the others will follow as essential 
corollaries, as unavoidable conditions entailed by the 
first. If land be necessary to life, control of land em- 
braces control of life. When control of life is given, 
control of the acts making up life is given also, and there 
is no prosperity, no development beyond what is desired 
and granted by the masters of life no matter whether the 
3 



34 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

master's claim is recognized as one in flesh and blood 
or as one of control over an element to life. 

How to go to a basis of equality and justice in the 
matter of land control must then concern all who admit 
its transcendant importance in the economic life of the 
people. As to wages, for all the efforts made to preserve 
their rate and efficiency, while there is in this country 
one helpless worker who will sell his labor for ten hours 
at sixty cents the wages of other workers also helpless 
of resort to self-help will crowd down to that line. The 
world is not a broad field in class interests, and wages the 
world over tend to a level. In the closer union of world 
interests results a closer similarity of class conditions 
and tendencies. By the division lines drawn by man the 
greater part of wage workers in the world continue by 
virtue of the use to which they may be put by those for 
whom they toil. By this division they have no recog- 
nized claim to the opportunities for bread-winning in 
a growing number. They win bread, by this division, in 
employment in those fields where appropriation and 
monopolization are in control, where the controllers hold 
the power of determining industry or idleness, bread or 
starvation, the power to say how much bread or the degree 
of starvation. The wage rate universal by the law that 
tends to uniform wages, is subject to this one-sided 
power. 



CHAPTER II. 

LAND AND WAGES. 

Wage scales, governed by justice, must take as a basis 
the productive power of the worker. Starting from the 
point where the isolated producer is the sole possessor 
of his self-wrought creations and ranging down to the 
prevailing system wherein monopolizers of natural forces 
pay out to the actual producers a sum of wages sufficient 
only for the barest subsistence, is the wage development 
as the world knows it. We say, in considering these 
themes, that capital must have its share of the increased 
values it is a factor in producing. This is true, but capi- 
tal is in justice entitled to a fair share only. Capital, the 
tool to more speedy operations, is by nature the secon- 
dary power to production. Capital is nothing without 
labor; cannot by its utmost power increase and benefit 
its master if labor does not co-operate with it ; cannot by 
its utmost power buy a breakfast for its master if labor 
had not been before it and fashioned the work of nature 
into form of food. Capital as an industrial factor is noth- 
ing without labor for it cannot without labor either com- 
mand or produce; it was nothing before labor for it 
is a product of labor. It is but an instrument for the 
convenience of man, fashioned by the cunningest tools 
of nature, the hands of man, directed by the master- 
worker, the mind of man. But we have made it of more 
worth in the division of rewards than man. The creature 
grows to dominate the creator, to dictate terms of pro- 
duction and recompense. In our industrial problem 
the terms have been transposed by this conceded power 



36 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

of capital and the result is what we see. Viewed in its 
impotence to singly benefit its masters and considered 
in its secondary importance to production the value of 
capital in the industrial scheme shrinks to its true pro- 
portion, — a worthy, speedy tool. As a force which must 
constantly be renewed, the primary power to this 
renewal being labor, the division of the products of labor 
assisted by capital should not be so largely in favor of 
capital as now is practiced. The share of products appor- 
tioned to capital is written in the economic world as 
interest. The share of labor is called wages. 

Enough for the support of life and the command of 
comforts according to the laborer's standard of living, 
governed by a fair proportionate sharing in the goods 
he creates, is no more than the worker's right. Anything 
less than this is not right. The laborer is worthy his 
hire. The fashioners of wealth forms are entitled to the 
use and enjoyment of the products of their skill and 
industry. Since without labor wealth does not increase 
the increase that comes by industry should in proportion 
of contribution be shared by those who create it. 

Profit-sharing, in some form, is the only rational 
method of adjusting wage and interest rates. It is the 
only one that stands in ethics. It is the only one ap- 
proved by reason. It is the only one that will recom- 
mend itself in final practicability. Necessary to any 
plan if right relations between the classes be the aim, 
a recognized profit-sharing must be incorporated into the 
industrial plan if that plan embraces situations com- 
pelling one class of men to look to another class for use 
of resources. Such a plan without the profit-sharing 
element cannot long prevail. They who have been de- 
prived, they for whom conditions have rendered exist- 
ence impossible independent of employing capital, are 
not to be made more helpless and miserable because 



LAND AND WAGES 37 

of the primal iniquity. If first conditions are unjust 
secondary ones must so far as possible make recom- 
pense for the evil results of the first. There is no com- 
pensation to be made sufficient to override the effects 
of wrong primary relations but gradual approaches 
toward right relations are less liable to excite harmful 
antagonisms than are sweeping measures of reform. 
That they are also more certain of a near adoption is 
a significant fact. Rewards put on a basis of industrial 
worth would go far toward minimizing the evils of 
monopolizations. A misanthropy urges to the opposite 
of self-reliance and directs the path of movement that 
leaves any man resourceless. The thought and practice 
of these on the part of both industrial classes must be set 
aside for the consideration of the necessity for a self- 
sufficiency and interdependence that will harmonize the 
antagonisms now felt. Warfare must cease between 
these two classes if true prosperity is to attend their 
effort. But warfare will not give way while its cause 
remains. 

The co-operation of labor is as necessary to production 
as land and more necessary than machinery. Land of 
itself is fruitless in the economic sense; labor without 
land is impossible. Production springs from the appli- 
cations of labor to land; machinery and other forms of 
capital are the products of these united forces and are 
powers to further and more rapid production. One cause 
of the existence of capital is like to be beaten back by 
the creature it has gendered. Labor has permitted capi- 
tal, in the broadest sense, to become the master of both 
land and man. Without land man cannot exist ; without 
labor land is non-productive and machinery void of 
effect. Labor controlling land and capital presents the 
normal, true relations of industrial forces. Labor and 
land at the tyranny of the secondary force is our presen- 



38 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

tation of the man and the tools which takes form in an 
inversion best expressed as the tools and the man. 

What we have called civilization is marked by the 
degree of excellence to which the industrial arts arise. 
There are other measures, but this is a prime one. If 
this measure be at all correct in itself the cause of civili- 
zation demands many changes in the present status of 
economic affairs. Labor being indispensable to produc- 
tion, the most effective forms of labor are necessary to 
the development of the highest civilization. A degraded 
state of labor in any country, natural and other condi- 
tions notwithstanding, is due to false perceptions of the 
principles governing the relations of labor to the pro- 
ductive forces of nature. If these principles were cor- 
rectly apprehended and undeviatingly adhered to, labor 
would at all times and in all places be in position to com- 
mand a fair distribution of products as a natural result 
of production and labor's contribution thereto. Then 
wages would no more be crowded down by capital that 
the masters of capital reap wealth from the necessities 
and helplessness of humanity. Labor would then be in 
the same independent position capital now enjoys with- 
out usurping aught that of a right belongs to capital; 
the two would share that independence and be as they 
should, independent of and mutually dependent upon one 
another. Then justice of wages would result, in what- 
ever form wages might be determined. The sharing of 
wealth resulting from the application of labor to natural 
forces would follow as the standard of wages, propor- 
tioned to the value of contribution. Then production 
would excel, for workers would excel. The recognition 
of labor's worth would work to constantly increase the 
laborer's capabilities and production in amount and ex- 
cellence be immeasurably stimulated. 



LAND AND WAGES 39 

If this practice of wage apportioning is relegated to 
Utopia and the spirit rejected with contempt for the 
weakness of the wage earner, if the scheme in some de- 
velopment be classed with the — not impossibilities, but 
unknown wage scales, it does not vitiate the principle. 
The justice, the apparent and eternal justice of it remains. 
It looks and is both Utopian and impossible in the pres- 
ent relations of capital and labor, because those relations 
are false. Right those false relations and false results 
will cease. Those relations established on the basis of 
actual necessity will strip the delegated importance from 
all secondary forces and give to the true forces to indus- 
trial operations the standing their worth demands. 

This may be arrived at in one way or another. If 
monopoly-capitalists have no use for the many but as 
tax subjects and beasts of burden, if monopoly-capitalis- 
tic employers do not choose to pay living and respectable 
wages because the necessities of labor give them oppres- 
sive powers, there must be some other way devised. 
A state of affairs that would make it possible for labor 
to become self-employing and occupation independent 
would simplify the question greatly, perhaps very greatly 
to the monopoly-capitalist and monopoly-capitalistic em- 
ployers who have been too much consulted in the past. 
As it is now, there needs but one party to a work con- 
tract, and that party the man who offers the wages — 
the other, the man who does the work, is a party only in 
the sense that he accepts the offer and does the work. 
This cannot last. It has almost arrived at the ceasing 
point now. Wages in dollars and cents, crowded down 
to the last penny on which labor can exist and be profita- 
ble, with all other forms of wages on the same level, 
is not the fixed wage standard of a Christian and civilized 
people. It cannot be the standard for such a people. It 
is too unchristian, too uncivilized. That a man who pays 



40 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

one set of men one dollar and ten cents should dismiss 
them for a set at one dollar and five cents, that wages in 
monopolized industries should be steadily and system- 
atically reduced, not because the businesses demand a 
reduction in wages, but only because the masters of 
industry have the power to reduce them and labor no 
alternative, is a preposterous and horrible thing. It is 
almost incredible that such conditions should exist in the 
latter end of the nineteenth century. Perhaps they do 
exist because we are in the latter end of the nineteenth 
century. This, the close, must be transitory in the con- 
ditions presented. A hundred years from this the mil- 
lennium will be that much nearer and such a state be that 
much more impossible than now. 

When we consider the progress that has been made 
in many ways, progress toward a right relationship in the 
human family, this worse than medieval state looks inex- 
plicable. When the tide of onward movement runs so 
swiftly in some directions it looks incomprehensible that 
it should here have moved backward, eddying, shifting 
without forward sweep in this sargasso sea. Philan- 
thropy works from the top to the bottom, or bottom- 
wards, salving the surface while the core remains fester- 
ing. Theologically inclined minds figure on the date of 
the millennium while evil stalks unchallenged over earth. 
Conditions will not change until causes change. But 
conditions must change, millennium or not. The changes 
of the last few years have been noticeable, but many do 
not bear the frank of millennial import ; salving continues 
for the core does not send out life. 

Five cents a day on ten thousand workers gives to the 
penny saved, penny earned, employers something like 
a half thousand dollars daily above usual profits, other 
things being equal. Alas, such civilization and such 
Christianity and such profits. Unhappy people, when 



LAND AND WAGES 41 

give as little, get as much as you can is the motto. When 
Mammon rules righteousness must depart. The firm, 
composed of Christian and civilized men, can with a few 
years of such earnings build a magnificent church, endow 
a hospital or establish a library and apologists will rise 
up and call them blessed. The church, the hospital and 
the library are needful and must come, but their source 
when in the bounty indicated makes them to represent 
the opposite of what they should stand for, not a pride 
but a shame, not a blessing but a curse. Those who 
grow rich in this wise and use ill-gotten wealth as a 
salve for the bruised conscience and a blind to the pub- 
lic do not lack apologists. There are even those who 
consider them great benefactors of human kind. It may 
be, but they also have the five hundred dollars daily 'earn- 
ings for their own use afterward as an earthly reward for 
their kindness of heart and philanthropic civilization and 
self-disinterested Christianity. 

But what of the ten thousand? Five cents a day less 
for three hundred days in the year represent fifteen dol- 
lars. Fifteen dollars yearly, extra, saved earnings for 
the employers, or fifteen dollars a year less wages for 
the employe. Not much represented, not much of a cut, 
the apologist would say, has said in many a like case, a 
reduction of less than five per cent., that same five cents 
a day aggregating fifteen dollars in a year. And would 
you dare laugh in derision that labor should contend for 
it, wrangle for it and shed blood for it? Do you sneer 
at it as a paltry sum? If so, in God's name remember 
that fifteen dollars will buy winter shoes for a family of 
six. It will put more clothing on little, shivering bodies. 
It will furnish a little extra bread to ease the hunger of 
unfed or underfed mites of humanity. It will buy the 
school books for three or four children for one year's 
work. It will provide for an annual one day's outing by 



42 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the family, exerting an influence which your church, 
hospital or library cannot bring to the vice-steeped man 
or woman, hopeless of reform through years of besot- 
ment. Such is a curtailed list of the possibilities of that 
little sum. If the thought is a novel one to you and 
you cannot remember it in His name, learn some day 
in the Devil's and as his champion, that prisons restrain 
but seldom reform, and that criminal expenses represent 
more in the life of a nation than courts and jails. Learn 
too that hundreds, thousands of children go clothed in 
tatters, hunger-pinched, and little, blue toes appeal to 
heaven in testimony that the fifteen dollars went to 
lengthen the cloud-piercing spire and not to buy them 
covering and comfort. 

A nation is better happy than great — great as the 
world in its estimate so often determines greatness, which 
greatness is only that false appearance of strength and 
prosperity that grows out of abuses and intolerations. 
If the people be not happy and good they cannot be 
great. Happiness and goodness depend, for free exer- 
cise, on the environment of the individual ; they do not 
spring from deprivations and squalor. The soul virtues 
of a people are mirrored in their daily lives and sur- 
roundings and in turn grow from the reflections there 
cast. Greatness is not a matter of comparison, but must 
exist in the consciousness of the people and in their lives. 
This is true of individuals and must therefore be true 
of any body of people. No people can be happy while 
injustice guides the course of daily events, but to be 
happy must first be great in the knowledge of right rela- 
tions in all the numerous associations of life, and a con- 
dition expressed by another word we often use — equality. 
Equality, which means in humbler phrase, equal chance. 
More than this none may claim for it, less than this, the 



LAND AXD WAGES 43 

boast of equality is but a self-condemned lie. In this 
sense it is a primal condition to greatness. 

No nation can be great while there is of its numbers 
one miserably conditioned being who has the ambition 
and ability to better his state in any realm of activity. 
The necessities of the state rightly guided do not crush 
a member of the state. Xo nation can be happy while 
one human creature coming under its provisions is by 
injustice kept from enjoying the material comforts he is 
capable of producing by his own efforts, and that, too, 
by the aid of all existing helps to such production. It 
is his right, his equality privilege shared by all, to do 
while there is need of doing, while others will be the 
better for his work and will make it profitable for him 
to work, while he has need of action to meet the require- 
ments of his own life. The highest possible development 
of the unit makes the happy and great commonwealth. 

The matter is simple enough, but for our bigotry 
which would create difficulties that we may display our 
brilliancy in disposing of them. We have accumulated 
the difficulties,, but the enacted efforts to dispose of them 
have failed to come up to promise. So we give classes 
the elements to wealth and place opportunities at their 
disposal, making them masters of production and labor, 
and then we set about seeking a method whereby they 
may be dispossessed of some of their advantages while 
retaining all, to curtail their power while the authority 
to command is unquestioned, to compel them to relin- 
quish a share of the profits while they still control the 
sources of wealth. In short, we try to regulate wages, 
and again, in short, we importune the thief we have 
helped to despoil us to come back and employ labor. 

There are many points in the wage question aside from 
the one of mere dollars and cents on the present basis of 
apportioning rewards. While we permit the wage hirer 



44 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

to control all forces to production there are many com- 
plex possibilities of wrong when seen from different 
standpoints and its control is hedged about by many 
questions as to whether proposed changes would not 
increase rather than diminish the vexations. These 
questions become self-answered certainties while patches 
and drugs, only, are proposed. We have more than 
enough of these shams already. We must bestir our- 
selves for something genuine to take their places. Ameri- 
can institutions are doctored into a state of chronic 
invalidism and patches are sewn on the original fabric 
of constitutional rights with a zeal and persistence that 
threaten its complete obscuration. The day of drugs 
and patches like that of all shams must draw to a close. 

One matter in the relation of capital and labor to be 
met and dealt with is fear, another is distrust. The 
shams we have incorporated into the industrial scheme 
are causes of these unnatural attitudes. Labor and capital 
fear and distrust each other in any proposed change con- 
veying an ever so faint suggestion of advantage on the 
part of the other above the grounds now held, and either 
seeks to guard against such a change. It is the eternal 
and omnipresent I we struggle for in every class, for- 
getful of the fact that the equally lasting and ever pres- 
ent You must likewise be cherished and provided for, 
that I without You is impossible in the industrial life. 
Fear and distrust abound as a result of false relations. 
In a state of recognized equality the Mine of labor and 
the Mine of capital would acknowledge the Thine of what 
now appears to be the enemy of either. Fears, distrusts 
and largely greed, will die out of the thoughts of labor 
and capital and will no longer play a part in their inter- 
course if an equitable basis of co-operation is estab- 
lished and perpetuated. Then would be demonstrated 
the fact that as one is necessary to the other so also is 



LAND AND WAGES 45 

the permanent good of one indispensable to the perma- 
nent good of the other. As it is, to labor capital appears 
tyrannous and oppressive, and this is true at times and 
places for the reasons that capital has power to be so and 
at times is forced to use the power or suffer over- 
throw and ruin. At other times the power is applied 
from other than self-preserving motives. To capital 
labor looks to be in a state of suspicion akin to revolt, 
seeking every possible advantage however small, how- 
ever great. This is quite generally the right view, but 
only because the past has taught that labor is always 
on the defensive from necessity, and even as such many 
of the rights of labor are infringed and in instances are 
clearly altogether abrogated. 

Only by a common interest and a mutual dependence 
and guarding of each other's rights can laborers and em- 
ployers of labor receive the fullest returns to industry in 
any enterprise. As the well-fed horse that receives gentle 
treatment and the carefully preserved machine are supe- 
rior in effort to the effort made by the economy that 
belabors a starveling or consumes time with broken 
and rusty machinery, so is independent labor better than 
dependent labor, so is well-fed, well-housed, well-edu- 
cated labor better than ignorant, half-clad, less than half- 
fed labor that is driven by the scorpion lash of necessity 
to uncongenial fields of labor, to the successful continu- 
ance of which such labor is a menace. The volume and 
quality of production are lessened by industrial condi- 
tions that develop such a state of labor. 

That labor mentally and physically depraved is harm- 
ful and dangerous to the industrial development of any 
country in which it is found is so commonly known that 
it is traded upon to the degradation of the order in our 
land. It is made much of in our political campaigns, in 
our boastings of a superior order of workers. Many 



46 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

things are asked for in the interests of intelligent labor 
by employers who do not hesitate to make up their pay- 
rolls from the most depraved classes the world field 
affords, bringing these into competition with American 
workers whose intelligence and superiority the hirers 
profess to value. Intelligence and virtue cannot compete 
with their opposites when the test is in dollars and cents ; 
they cannot survive competition from this class. Neither 
can employers maintain a high order of industrial excel- 
lence if they force the wage scale to the level of the de- 
praved class. Employers will ultimately receive the ser- 
vice for which they pay. The dollars they save now will 
not reimburse them for the decreased productiveness of 
labor worked by such a leaven; no more will they 
buy back the blessings their mercenary greed now 
rejects. The inferior labor they introduce and to which 
standard they are forcing our own laborers will appear 
more disadvantageous in the future when the policy they 
are pursuing has had time to develop its completest 
inadequacy. If the evils of such practice are now glar- 
ingly apparent only by comparison, it is because the 
drifting away process has not been long enough estab- 
lished for the losses entailed by an inferior class of 
workers to become of undeniable proportions. If hirers 
of labor would build for the future they must maintain 
a wage rate as high as consistent with a reasonable 
profit on investments. Even their present best interests 
demand justice to their workers for the future is a con- 
tinuation of the present and every day increases the de- 
cline they are inaugurating. 

This is a consideration hirers of labor might do well 
to take into account. Since money getting is the end to 
which creation was spoken forth, the goal of this inter- 
mediary space we call life or time, and the only sure pass- 
port into the freer condition of the beyond life which 



LAND AND WAGES 47 

has been named eternity and toward which we are rush- 
ing, they ought, even at the risk of doing a righteous 
thing, to consider this and see if it be not true and to their 
this world interests if not solely, in part at least, to weigh 
the matter fairly and act for humanity. The godly obli- 
gations of self-aggrandizement might suffer some pangs 
at first as a result of the fact that few really good things 
can be entirely appropriated to self, but the necessity of 
ultimate gains should have no removable obstacle to 
contend with. It is nature's law to promote results only 
as means are promoted and man cannot run counter to 
her mandates without paying in full the penalty for his 
rashness. Alas, no ! 

The wage difficulty will never approach equitable ad- 
justment in a state of industrial economics where one 
man receives or controls an enormous income for, and 
while doing nothing that is of value to the race, while 
other men work all day long, year after year for enough 
to barely keep life in the body. It will not be adjusted 
on a basis that permits the appropriation of wealth 
sources by individuals while many starve because they 
lack bread who would gladly exchange labor for bread 
or would go to work and create bread, but that the ele- 
ments to such exchange and such creation are denied 
them through this appropriation. The two classes 
divided thus could not be found in a commonwealth 
where opportunities were not subject to monopolization. 

Above the positive influence for evil that princely in- 
comes on one hand and beggarly destitution on the other 
will call forth, is the power of the wealthy to control the 
fortunes and lives of others that this unfair distribution 
will always bring about. The princely income of itself 
may do no harm so long as it is arrived at by honest 
means, without trampling on the rights of others. But 



48 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

few are arrived at in that way, so few that they can most 
safely be set down as the character in units column in 
expressing ten by figures. The way may be provided 
for by laws, but legalized wrongs are the ones we have 
most suffered from. No method of riches getting 
can be honest that injures a member of the society from 
which the riches are drawn. The nearest to right any 
of the methods by which such fortunes are usually 
amassed can be said to have lain in getting the consent 
of the people, fairly given or otherwise, to plunder them, 
and then to plunder. In monarchical forms this is a 
kingly prerogative; in representative governments the 
people consent to it through a false education as to the 
legitimate functions of government, through misrep- 
resentations of the needs of governments in revenues 
and the like, or in some emergency consent to a special 
tax which is hard to throw off afterward and is diverted 
to selfish personal ends by those who can so pervert its 
original intentions. However much the people may be 
to blame for their own despoilment they do not and will 
not submit with the patience the class has shown in the 
ages of the past. The unwise display of riches in this 
country, the lavishness of millionairedom, does not oper- 
ate to soothe the fret of misery before whose eyes the 
flaunt of unparalleled extravagance is made. The eyes 
of democracy are weak to the glitter of scarlet and gold 
of enthroned oppression, the ears dull to the cheers of 
long live privileged greed. The feeling of Demos at 
such demonstrations is one of questioning from whence 
rises and by what power evoked appears the specter 
supposed to have been banished from these shores some- 
time in the latter part of the eighteenth century. 

A great many of the wrongs to labor, wrongs to 
society, are those the world has been accustomed to 
through the practices of many centuries. Even decades 



LAND AND WAGES 49 

of abuse will rivet with almost* indissoluble union the 
evils a careless people may be made to suffer from. In 
these ways the greater part of a people come to look 
at certain forms of inequality as the legally vested rights 
supported by the moral force of those more fortunate 
by purely accidental circumstances. While resenting 
the outcome of such diverse relations, many do not even 
question the legitimacy of the arrangement. In our own 
country this acceptation of wrongs established gives rise 
to peculiar situations. While the people are madly 
jealous of what they conceive to be their rights and 
privileges, they give quiescent consent and support to the 
self-established and perpetuated injustices that under- 
mine the foundations on which they build in the hope 
of security. That the causes of the evils are unrecog- 
nized and unsuspected by many is not a saving element, 
but rather one of greater danger. Because we are sup- 
posed to not foster inequalities let us not deny their 
presence while so palpable; having seen them the next 
step is how to abolish them. Power over human life 
by what means soever is an unsafe one at all times and 
under all circumstances unless obligations of govern- 
ment and accountability are imposed. Here, by the pri- 
vate ownership and control of life elements we have the 
peculiar anomaly of power without responsibility and 
authority freed from the reckonings of final results. 

The power of hirers of labor to let labor alone, to leave 
labor unhired and thus make self-support impossible 
by those who have no hope but that of wage earn- 
ing, is an* error more apparent than its correction, to 
many. The only rational grounds for hope of betterment 
lies in an effort at equalization of opportunities so that 
fewer will be bound by the will and pleasure of capital. 
Short contracts, the uncertainty of permanent work, 
carry evils potential and actual. Instability, with the 
4 



50 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

fears natural to such terms, follows. The hirers contract 
with workers for a few months of the year. The terms 
are too often what have been tritely designated as star- 
vation wages. Labor has no alternative but to accept 
what is offered and generally feels fortunately dealt with 
that so much is fairly certain in a day and times when 
competition is crowding wages and work to the very 
limits of possibilities. At the end of the time contracted 
for, perhaps before, the laborer is cast aside to make the 
best possible shift for himself. The employer's money 
interests are best served by closing up his business until 
a reduction of the general stock of goods advances 
prices, or until more favorable legislation is forthcoming 
to enable him to increase profits. Or perhaps, as is 
growing to be a favorite weapon, he closes shops until 
after an impending election for the scare-crow effect 
such a proceeding will have on a credulous and easily- 
alarmed public. 

Because these things are growing to be the common 
situation we are coming to "protect" labor. But the only 
apparent lesson in protection and rights for all the talk 
indulged on these themes is the protection that protects 
special interests against the interests of the majority, 
and the rights of the minority not only to pick the 
pockets of the rest, but to tie the hands of the robbed 
while doing so. Examples without number may be cited. 
As a sample case take that of the American manufacturer 
of tin plate, being a business which neither exaggerates 
the evils of favoritism nor one of minor importance. 
Let legislation for the purpose of repealing laws granting 
pickpocket privileges to this industry, be agitated, and 
while the purse-lifting clause can apply to only a few 
and the looted condition fall to all the rest, yet through- 
out the length and breadth of the land will be found 
frantically aroused men who will not only insist that they 



- 



By LAND AND WAGES 51 

themselves ''must and ought to be robbed by and in the 
interests of the tin-plate people, but want the whole 
nation \,o come under the same provision. At the same 
tim^ 1 et a proposition come up for the granting of mil- 
Ho.n$ of acres of the people's land to individuals or cor- 
porations for private use and profit and we hear but little 
t)f the rights or of protection to the people. Such grants 
deprive thousands of actual homes, keep thousands de- 
pendent mi the pleasure of capital for support from 
■wages, and place thousands in the grasp of the rent 
'extorter. We are told that both these sample laws will 
iresalt in the development of the country, furnish work, 
;a&d are, not to complete the list of special blessings they 
are to entail, necessary to the welfare of our industries. 
That is to say, that one class of people are for the devel- 
opment of industries to be given every possible advan- 
tage in the way of prices and that to develop these indus- 
tries they must have the people's land upon which to 
develop them. And against these conditions, we try, 
and sometimes even succeed in passing laws that fix the 
hours of a day's work, or that limit the age at which 
people may begin work. This, in the one caSe is called 
encouragement to industries, and in the other protection 
to labor! 

Unfortunately, the time occasionally arrives when em- 
ployers in obedience to the laws of self-defense must 
shut down work. The complications produced by the 
dependence of labor upon capital under existing condi- 
tions are the weakness of the system. From over-stimu- 
lation too much has been produced, from under-con- 
sumption too little has been used in one branch of pro- 
duction. Over-stimulation is a seeming prospect of great 
prosperity which fails to realize, underconsumption 
follows the inability of the people to command goods. 
The two causes of business disorders are particularly 



52 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

active in any system that places the advantages all on one 
side, a glut of one production or a falling off in demand 
for it produces a fear of ruin, and capital in that branch 
of industry finds it necessary or advisable to close work. 
This throws the industrial machinery out of harmony. 
Every reduction of pay, every lockout, decreases the 
demand for productions in other lines, and soon another 
producer feels the slackening, and to save himself, closes ; 
and so it continues along this chain of action until busi- 
ness is brought to a standstill. If there has been a pool 
or combination formed in the industries affected, the 
action has been all the more rapid, and thousands are 
laid off at once in different localities, the fever spreading 
with increased speed. The next industry to feel the 
lessening demand lays off its thousands, the rapidity of 
action being accelerated with each accession to the ranks 
of unwilling idlers until the whole industrial organism 
is stagnating in inaction. With the first impulse of de- 
crease, away goes the panic-breeding order for reduction 
of wages, shut-down, lock-out, strike. Capital owns the 
land, without which there is no production, and work 
being denied, labor is left without means of support. 
Capital and monopolization neither furnish wages nor 
permit workers to labor independently for support, and 
by power of existing relations, labor can do neither with- 
out permission of those who control resources. 

No matter what the cause, the seasons of closed work- 
shops are far too frequent and prolonged for the happi- 
ness and well being of those who must depend upon 
their earnings there for support and the support of those 
dependent upon them by nature. The workers are left 
to meet the necessities of the situation in the best way 
at command. Their late employer feeds and houses his 
four-footed employes during the season of inactivity; 
he covers from wind and weather the machinery of his 



LAND AND WAGES 53 

great halls. But the animals with the reasoning mind, 
the divinely fashioned mechanism, fearfully and wonder- 
fully made, with the hopes and fears, the longings and 
heart throbbings with which life here is filled, hold no 
legal claim to his purse. They do not gratify his love of 
ease and splendor and display. No moneyed interest is 
represented by their comfort and preservation. So they 
hold no recognized claim on him. They are not per- 
mitted a living from the products of their fashioning, 
they are not permitted to produce after their master has 
found it profitable to lock up. They are the least con- 
siderable part of a system as we apportion rewards and 
control economic events. Poor human machinery that 
will wear out some day, poor beasts of burden for whom 
mere stall and hay, were they provided, were they even 
permitted, would not suffice to make happy and good. 
How much more desirable would your lots be could you 
like your less sensitive and more favored prototypes be 
content in the state wherein you find yourselves, calmly 
subject to the will of your masters. How much more 
conducive to peace, could you conduct your existences 
on the economical principle of the machine which re- 
quires no oiling while standing idle, not earning wealth 
for its masters. 

If the cause be one where selfish motives cut off 
wages or one where, sadly enough, the general or that 
particular state of business will warrant from neither 
the profit nor self-preserving view point the hiring of 
labor the year round, what then? Must the would-be- 
worker beg or steal a living? Either profession has its 
impediments and penalties of man's devising when en- 
tered into with modest ambitions. The cold rebuff, the 
prison. He might starve? Happy and brilliant idea. 
How much this choice would simplify matters could the 
unfortunate be made to look at it so. We hear it said 



54 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

if fewer were engaged in the work steadier employment 
and better wages would follow. What truth, what wis- 
dom, what penetration! Malthus himself could ask for 
no more. Those who modestly hold back that others 
may get a place may beg or steal or starve. 

My friends, they often do the first ; you are interested, 
perhaps, in the reports of those who bear the burden of 
relief work in those centers of population where compe- 
tition is keenest; you doubtless note the increased peti- 
tions at your own door and those you encounter on the 
street. They not infrequently do the second; a stolen 
article put in pawn, provides temporary relief or brings 
food and shelter at the expense of the community for a 
length of time governed by the value of the article. But 
a light has appeared in the courts of the world and a 
precedent has been established; in the city of Jean Val- 
jean a young mother convicted of the charge of bread 
stealing was discharged without punishment because she 
took it to save the life of her starving child. Brothers, 
what a precedent. If the taking of food to prevent star- 
vation has ceased to be a moral crime in the decision of 
one judge, as it has ceased to be a crime in the thought 
of the world, there is the germination of a new order 
taking place. This new phase of property rights will be 
found instructive of many things among which property 
privileges as we have looked upon them may be found 
necessary of a revision. As to the last resort, starvation, 
they many times are driven there, — died from lack of 
proper nourishment, the papers eloquently record. 
These are the logical results of failure of self-support 
and brought about, as the records of crime almost in- 
variably show, by necessity and not choice. Not, in a 
matter of competition, because they of the host unfortu- 
nate stepped back that others might have work and 



LAND AND WAGES 65 

wages, but despite their utmost efforts to work, too, in 
a world where nothing is needed so much as work. 

There is another matter for the apologist to consider, 
and which might ease him of his burden of apologies if 
it be possible of easement. If naked, starving, toolless 
would-be workers could command the articles of food 
and clothing necessary to their comfort, 2nd means to 
the prosecution of their work in other fields, a change 
would appear. Could the other fields by any sort of 
magic or common sense be opened to them (and alas ! 
how like magic common sense sometimes seems), the 
rest would arrange itself. Then the armies of workers 
in our already established industries might have work 
year in, year out, at good pay that both the desires and 
demands of consumers be met. But these fields are 
closed as by magic that has no likeness to common sense, 
nor even uncommon sense. It is by the evil magic of 
mistake. 

i 

If the unused land in our country should be thrown 
open to use by edict of government or through the phil- 
anthropy of those who control it the wage ferment would 
do much to compose itself by a spreading out of labor 
forces through new and expanding channels of industry 
that would be provided and opened. Opportunities 
being open there would be two parties to a work con- 
tract, the one who offers wages and work and the one 
who accepts. If capital could not give good wages the 
worker would be able to employ himself by the use of 
this land. His wages would then be sure and measured 
by the productiveness of his effort. 

Labor commissions, trades-unions, party platform 
declarations of sympathy and like tried ways, have been 
educative up to the main point, but as finalities their 
day has been too long. Futilities must at some place 



56 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

give way to practicabilities and each day makes the de- 
mand more imperative. The present arrangement of 
industrial forces by which labor is unable to live inde- 
pendently of wage-paying capital presses with constantly 
increasing weight against the wage scale. Opportuni- 
ties for the spreading out of the wage-receiving mass 
is the only hope of relief while we continue in a competi- 
tive idea. The adjustment that would follow such a 
change in the situation of labor would be a natural and 
healthy one. Efforts at compulsion and regulation in 
relations and rewards to labor and capital after the basis 
of their union is established are unnatural and unhealthy, 
and will always prove abortive of the good they struggle 
to bring about. Established on a just basis, these efforts 
would not be needed for the greatest good would natur- 
ally go to each and rewards be to each in the measure 
of productiveness. 

The ability of capital to bring forth after its kind is 
sure. In any industrial organization that insures re- 
ward governed by merit, capital would take its rightful 
place both in production and returns for production. 
Labor, in existing relations to capital, does not to any 
degree approaching equality share in the distribution of 
products, is crowded down more and more by the forces 
that render it impossible for labor to command a fair 
proportion of production. Labor can and will take care 
of labor, independent of all ludicrous and hypocritical 
attempts at protection, with serene contempt for all 
mawkish protestations of sympathy and respect if left 
free to do so, if embargoes are removed, if given a chance. 
The main trouble lies in our perversion of natural rights 
and our trying after that to evolve a right conclusion 
from a wrong beginning, — something which has not been 
done by any people and something not likely to be ac- 
complished in our case. 



LAND AND WAGES 57 

Instead of nature's way, men insist on patching and 
doctoring the natural until they hold up their hands in 
amazement at the unholy spectacle their work presents. 
We drift farther in falsehood in our self-complacent 
attempts to do something to right the evils that follow. 
What that something is, let it speak for itself, as too often 
in our doing of something in the law line and general 
legislating for labor and in the clamor for such, the some- 
thing done is not stimulating to our pride when its 
worked-out solution reveals it as it really is. Not what 
we hoped for and not what our gifted and eloquent rep- 
resentatives in the halls of legislation assured us and 
proclaimed it to be when they were working at the 
double task of making history for the future to leave 
unrepeated and votes for themselves, is this something. 
It has been often vain, often hurtful, often insincere. If 
our civilization and national life are to be natural, healthy 
states, we must root out the artificialities that have grown 
up in the places of truths. Natural equity, not doctored 
effort at justice in results, must be the order. Otherwise 
we must look to thistles for figs, in which expectation let 
it not be thought strange if we are disappointed for 
nature yields after her kind. 

The present unhappy state of economic differences will 
continue to mark the world of industry while we continue 
in the relations that give rise to it. Capital will shut up 
the wage purse when it is to the interests of capital to do 
so, just as labor would go on a holiday if money was to 
be earned that way. On a basis of competition either 
class will at all times pursue the course that is most 
advantageous at the time of action. That an advantage 
to one operates to injure the other will be given no part 
in the consideration of actual wage contracts. It is a 
truth that has been demonstrated by word and practice 
times without number, but when the world grows tired 



58 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

of placing advantages on one side the results as rewards 
will follow whatever action they take to prevent ad- 
vantages. 

Good wages to all who work would be possible if op- 
portunities were open. Wages are the full production 
of labor when unassisted by capital ; when capital plays 
a part in production the division of goods produced is 
made to labor as wages. When labor seeks capital wages 
are low. When capital seeks labor wages are high. 
Either is compelled to pay higher for the other if com- 
petition is in its class. Either will thrive if competition 
is in the other class. Both will prosper if opportunities 
for the full play of each are preserved. The question 
then is whether one class shall possess the opportunities 
or whether they shall be shared. The natural forces 
appropriated by either class exclusively will place the 
other class at the greatest possible disadvantage for if 
the one must seek from the other opportunity to pro- 
duce the disadvantaged one must sacrifice much to gain 
the opportunity. Capital as an aid to production will 
never fail of its full function and reward because it so 
much promotes production. It is only capitalists as a 
class that would stand in danger of possible ruin if the 
opportunities to produce were placed solely in the keep- 
ing of labor. Labor as a factor to production will never 
fail in full measure of force for without labor is no pro- 
duction. But laborers as a class are subjected to the 
hardest possible conditions when they are bound by the 
closing of opportunities to submit to the will and terms 
of labor hiring capital for work. Unhampered labor by 
the diversity of occupations and the never failing flow 
of production a self-employing system would make sure, 
would be able even in seasons of depression to make 
living expenses and keep the stream of commerce mov- 
ing. Such seasons of depressions as we know would 



LAND AND WAGES 59 

decrease in length and frequency as the natural results 
of unresisted operations approached a complete adjust- 
ment of economic forces. The world of business could 
survive greater efforts at special legislation than the 
history of law making has known and be but little dis- 
turbed thereby if labor was free to produce and so keep 
commercial forces in movement. Better than this, 
special legislation would die out by its own ineffective- 
ness if the main rights of labor to the forces of produc- 
tion were maintained. 

It is not stagnation coming from the abundance of 
products but from inability of consumers to command 
those products that causes industrial convulsions. Over- 
production as an explanation of the industrial phe- 
nomena named stagnation, crises and hard times, is an 
exploding theory, burning out, self-consuming of its 
own worthlessness to account for the various situations 
it is said to produce. Under-consumption, its successor, 
while nearer the exact truth, is like to prove of itself as 
profitless by way of correction of evils, though it may 
serve to lead to the true explanation. In the days when 
over-production did duty as cause for disorders, when it 
fell from the tongue of apologists as water from the foun- 
tain, when it started from the page menacingly, with 
snake-like fascination to the industrious searcher, then 
was the unhappy worker roundly and soundly upbraided 
for his numbers, his impatience, and bade hold his peace 
when the wheels ceased revolving and the wage roll 
was cancelled. Under-consumption relieves him some- 
what of this load of infamy; but now there are in effect 
too few of his class, whereas formerly there were too 
many. Then he produced too much, now he consumes 
too little. Therefore of him and his class comes stag- 
nation, disaster, whether it be over-production or under- 
consumption staying the processes of production. 



60 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

These are terms merely, and either fails to express 
the truth in clear statement as to why we are subject to 
periods of idleness and want. Each expresses a condi- 
tion growing out of inequalities that follow discrimina- 
tions in opportunity. They are different terms to 
express the same fact, but the fact is a result of unequal 
distribution of economic goods among the people and 
not the cause of the inequality. 

Labor would not importune capital for work at any 
wages, much less at what is now given, if the command 
of life necessities hinged not upon wage-getting. Folly 
and blindness lead when we travel the road of restric- 
tions in opportunity. Injustice guides when of the 
abundance created by labor only that small portion is left 
to labor that will sustain life. Nature, heaven, makes no 
such mistake ; there is plenty for all if the conditions 
governing our industrial state are fitted to the needs of 
the inhabitants, not the needs fitted to conditions that 
are of themselves unjust and insufficient to the require- 
ments of a much lighter population. 

Land on which to earn wages does not imply a nation 
of agriculturists. Instead of concentration, it would 
rather effect a dissipation of labor forces to a larger 
variety of industries. Did this thought ever trouble the 
serenity of the objector? Perhaps his business of object- 
ing has grown to such all-engrossing magnitude and 
sufficiency that he has not had time for the thought that 
we must have land on which to rest the shop, the tools, 
the counter, then, even as now. Land on which to stand, 
to sit, to lie in sleep ; land to be born upon ; land upon 
which to be educated in the mysteries of life; land to be 
buried in, no matter who owns it. And, oh, brother of 
the objecting mind, it is true you must have ground or 
grounds upon which to object; your business would go to 
pieces otherwise and the world be so much better with- 



EAND AND WAGES 61 

out it that you, with your peculiar notions, cannot afford 
to advocate a state that would contribute towards its 
dissolution. 

Since we must have land to assist in the discharge of 
all the functions of this life, the ownership of the land is 
of vital importance. The effects of private ownership 
when land is subject to the facts of monopolization bear 
directly on the wage difficulty. High rents and limita- 
tions to industry, inseparable from monopolization, reach 
out through all avenues of industrial activity and dimin- 
ish and restrict results and operations. The control of 
products cannot be divorced from the control of oppor- 
tunities. If these are controlled by a class, that class 
will control products. The mining industries provide a 
fair illustration of this kind of control. The mine oper- 
ators are supreme in fixing prices in the lines of produc- 
tion in which they are engaged. They not only regu- 
late the prices to consumers, but manipulate prices in a 
way to kill competition when the resources they draw 
from have not yet been subject to complete monopoliza- 
tion. Their power along all lines of operation must 
increase with the growth of population and the advance 
of scientific aids to production. As with one, so with all. 
Strength attracts strength. Every advantage contrib- 
uted by science is directed to the support of those who 
possess the primary advantages. Those who possess 
them not get but the merest fragments, the unavoidable 
overflow. 

Land comprehends all forces to production but labor. 
Labor applied to land produces the goods man desires. 
The control of these goods fixes the economic prosperity 
of the producers. If they who produce control the 
goods, production will go to labor. If another class 
beside labor springs up and gets control of production, 



62 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

this control must be in the nature of a gift from labor 
or in the nature of an usurpation over one of the forces 
to production, one, or both. If land is necessary to pro- 
duction, control of land embraces control of production ; 
if labor is necessary to production, control of labor is 
also control of production. In no industrial common- 
wealth of the world has labor created a second class to 
whom to give the bulk of production. In no industrial 
commonwealth of the world where great fortunes exist 
in single families do we find a condition of prosperity 
in the producing classes commensurate with the volume 
and value of production. This being true, the inequality 
of wealth control must certainly lie in the control of one 
or both factors to wealth production. Since no com- 
monwealth of national significance recognizes or prac- 
tices direct human ownership, the cause of economic 
inequalities must be found in private land-ownership 
Men are not owned ; land is. By the ownership of land 
comes control of the products of land and that other 
factor to production, labor. 



CHAPTER III. 

MONOPOLY AND WAGES. 

Whatever detracts from the returns to labor as a 
decrease of money wages or decrease in value-of-pro- 
ducts wages, is in effect a tax on labor for the benefit of 
those who pay wages and those who by virtue of supe- 
rior advantages are able to produce at prices ruinous to 
weak competitors. In any decrease of net returns for 
production they who control production will suffer least ; 
the disadvantaged factor will be compelled to bear the 
heaviest portion of decrease. All disadvantages con- 
nected with private monopolization of opportunities in 
any industrial department will accrue to wage earners. 
The fact of monopolization makes it so to the degree 
of monopolization prevailing. When private ownership 
of natural resources prevails, they who control the re- 
sources will not permit their development except upon 
terms entirely satisfactory to the controllers. This con- 
trol gives them the power of postponing or arresting 
development, except upon their terms. It gives them 
power to regulate wages in the degree to which these 
industries stand in proportion to the entire industrial 
wage rate. When the natural forces to production are 
subject to private control it gives rise to a distinct and 
peculiar function of capital which will array capital 
against labor so long as this private control is continued. 
In a just and healthy state of industry capital and labor 
work amicably for mutual profit and helpfulness. In the 
perversion that follows private control of resources this 
wise course is destroyed. In this way: The man who 



64 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

controls a rich mineral deposit hires other men to do the 
work necessary to placing the products of that field on 
the markets. To consider the development of this indus- 
try in the most profitable way to labor we will assume 
that production in this particular case is of the most 
primitive type. One man owns the deposits. He pays 
the men a per cent, of the results of their work. Being 
a coal field, he allows each miner one-fourth of the coal 
he brings to the surface. This is the miner's wages. If 
the miner brings up two tons daily his wages are one- 
half ton ; the ton and a-half of his day's work are the 
profits of the owner. If one hundred men worked the 
mine they would, at the same rate, bring up two hundred 
tons, fifty of which would be wages, one hundred and 
fifty being profits to the owner. This one hundred and 
fifty tons daily he sells and puts into machinery for the 
further and more rapid development of his mine, con- 
verting three-fourths of the products of one hundred 
men into capital for his own use. The machinery he 
puts in doubles the effectiveness of his workers and now 
they bring up daily four hundred tons, fifty of which he 
allows them as wages, fifty we will say represents the 
wear on his machinery, and three hundred the profits of 
the owner. Continuing this rate of gains for a few years, 
the mine owner finds himself possessed of wealth repre- 
senting hundreds of thousands of dollars. If he has 
paid the government one-tenth of all his gains for the 
ownership of the mine, he still has an enormous rate of 
clear gains, or more than two hundred and fifty tons 
daily as profits. 

Having improved his mining facilities to the highest 
degree of profitableness he seeks now new investments 
for his wealth. He buys more mineral land, where he 
starts in with all the advantages of machinery, making 
the highest gains from the first. He erects mills for 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 65 

working up raw materials into finished products. He 
builds railroads for the conveying of his own and other 
people's goods to the most desirable markets. Being 
established and with enormous resources at command 
he is a power in the industrial world. In coal field 
operations he can manipulate prices in a way to shut 
out competition by any one less ably equipped than him- 
self. He can lower the price of coal one-half, if neces- 
sary, to keep out competitors; having choked competi- 
tion he can double the normal price of coal and hold it 
there until the threat of competition compels him to 
lower it. In his mills the same tactics prevail. In rail- 
road matters his method of operation is essentially the 
same. He can, at the prospect of rivalry, aside from the 
lowered prices of goods, advance wages of workers to 
bring up by so much wage rates in the same industries, 
and in this way embarrass competitors. After the dan- 
ger to his sovereignty is over he can lower wages to 
lowest possible point, dragging down by the value of 
his wage force the pay of every wage worker in the 
world field. He can manipulate railroad tariffs to the 
ruin of competitors, besides putting his own goods in 
the market comparatively free of transportation costs. 
So by control of natural resources enters capital upon 
its peculiar function, that of preventing competition and 
that of monopolizing opportunities. So also by this 
control, assisted by monopolization, wages are depressed 
and in continuation of this policy wage workers are 
brought to a state where they have not the least power 
in the regulation of wages. This state of helplessness 
is complete when monopolization of resources and op- 
portunities is complete. For the worker there is no 
opening; he must work where wages are to be earned. 
The small capitalist is crushed by this system — where, 
5 



66 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

then, shall labor appear if it tries to stand out against the 
force that relentlessly crushes all weaker than itself? 

Had the one hundred men gotten control of the mine 
by the same terms as the one they could have developed 
it as fully. The only difference in results would have 
been the financial standing of all concerned. The profits 
that then went to one all would have shared. The other 
enterprises following success in the coal field they could 
have pursued. This would have resulted in joint control 
and monopolization. The one hundred could as suc- 
cessfully destroy competition by weaker ones as did the 
single owner and capitalist. This would have produced 
the same effect we get by combinations and trusts 
under the prevailing system. If, instead of the rights of 
the whole people passing to the one hundred in the 
ownership of the mineral field, the rights of all to it hav- 
ing been reserved, the succession of powerful monopoli- 
zations would not have appeared. Capital would not 
have been destroyed, but monopolization would have 
been rendered impossible. Capital would have contin- 
ued its legitimate work of promoting production for the 
benefit of producers. It would not have been devoted 
to the crushing of many for the profit of one; it would 
have been put to the service of all affected by its opera- 
tions. There would not have existed the opportunity 
for one man to make of himself a millionaire by the 
dooming of thousands to poverty ; the prosperity of thou- 
sands by the injury of none would have resulted. Take 
away enormous aggregations of capital in the control 
of one or a few and monopolization of man-created 
opportunities, as manufactories, means of transit, etc., 
will be put outside the pale of possibilities ; take away 
private control of natural resources and these colossal 
hoards of wealth will be impossible of collection singly 
or in combinations to a magnitude dangerous to the 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 67 

prosperity of the mass of the people. Control of either 
wealth factor ultimates in control of the wealth. 

The injury to labor possible under the prevailing sys- 
tem is governed by the degree to which monopolization 
is possible in the industry to be developed. Some fields 
are capable of monopolization to a point where compe- 
tition ceases, others in a less, and still others in a still less 
ruinous degree. Those that can be monopolized to a 
degree altogether excluding competition bear with the 
greatest downward force on the wage rate. By the 
destruction of competition the portion of the wage fund 
devoted to carrying forward that industry is contracted 
to the lowest amount that will be accepted by workers 
in the monopolizing establishments. By the shutting 
out of competitive concerns there is a per cent, of the 
total numbers of wage workers thrown out or kept out of 
work. These enter the labor markets of the world and 
bid for the places of those already employed. This has 
the effect of still further cutting down the wage rate, until 
in final effect it is reduced to the lowest living point. 
Before monopolization was absolute the wage rate could 
be maintained at a point of respectable support for work- 
ers, for there were few idle. After complete monopo- 
lization workers must accept what is offered because 
they are helpless. The degrees of monopolization in 
any industry will determine the number it is to add to the 
great army of those seeking livings through the medium 
of wages in money. The total of such seekers will grow 
even though population should remain stationary; the 
tendency to a complete monopolization with the combi- 
nations possible to monopolizations would result so. 
With the increase of population the number of wage 
competitors will largely increase. Coal fields are sub- 
ject to complete monopolization, therefore coal prices 
are subject to full control by mine owners, the number 



68 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

of workers who find employment there can be fully deter- 
mined by those who own the mines, and the wages of 
workers can be regulated by those who set the price of 
coal and hire the workers. But wages here cannot be 
reduced to the lowest possible wage point until monopo- 
lization in other fields has reached completion as an abso- 
lute fact of control or is established by the comparative 
fact of lack of competition. The fishing industry is not 
at present subject to monopolization, although capital 
in its oppressive function has made it much less profita- 
ble to those who cannot engage in it as a large enter- 
prise. The solitary fisher with his little boat and simple 
nets can earn a meager income ; he with the more primi- 
tive traps can supply fish for the family table. Well- 
equipped fishing fleets fitted for a season's work have 
clear advantages in fish taking, so that the profit is to 
capital here as in the coal fields it is to appropriation 
resulting in capital and monopolization. The develop- 
ment of each industry by our methods has taken from 
the lists of self-supporters in each and placed them 
among those who must seek livings elsewhere. In the 
industry subject to the advantages given by capital alone 
a single worker without much capital can earn a living, 
can supply his own table. But a man may not mine 
coal on the land of another ; he can be utterly prohibited 
entrance on this ground. So it is an evident fact that 
the degree to which private control is possible is the 
degree to which labor can be injured and oppressed in 
the given industry. 

Whatever detracts from the efficacy of wages to com- 
mand economic goods decreases them in that amount. 
Wages are comparatively low if they command but a 
low rate of living. One hundred dollars a month would 
be low wages for a common worker if his rent should be 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 69 

fifty, water and heat twenty-five, leaving twenty-five of 
the one hundred dollars for all other expenses, they 
being proportionately high. Our land system compels 
wage earners who have not been so fortunate as to 
secure a home, to pay, in proportion to their earnings, 
large rents for houses in which to live. As long as the 
present wage scale and land system prevail there are 
millions of people who cannot secure themselves homes, 
Land is too high, wages are too low for them to thus 
protect themselves against this continuous drain on the 
slender resources out of which must come clothing and 
food. Building associations and organizations of that 
kind which work for mutual aid have been a blessing 
to thousands of families, but they do not reach down to 
the class in greatest need of relief. There are districts 
where the power of the landholder is too sure for this 
and where the workers are land bondmen to the men 
who own the soil. In many of the monopolized indus- 
tries the rent feature is a part of the business, as is the 
company store. The monopolizers not only determine 
how much shall be paid for service, but also dictate how 
it shall be spent — the land and all that is placed upon it 
being the recognized property of the employer. The 
employes have no choice but to pay the rents demanded, 
as they have no choice as to where their earnings may 
be spent. The forces that unite to render them power- 
less before these aggressions are the ones that throw 
them on the mercy of the monopolizer, that make them 
from their own necessities crowd down wages to the 
lowest living point. 

In many communities not thus controlled by an indi- 
vidual or company, land is held at a figure entirely too 
high to warrant labor enjoying even a hope of a recog- 
nized right in land. Many times in many places it is not 
for sale, but for rent only. So rents must continue to be 



70 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

paid, a tax for the benefit of individuals who control the 
land. This unceasing expense is a large per cent, of 
wages earned and is a noticeable hindrance to the pros- 
perity of those who must pay it; it is an injustice to 
labor greater than to any other class as all burdens on 
necessities must be. Of the meager wages labor in the 
common levels commands, a twenty per cent, for rents 
lessens the power of wages to a more hurtful degree 
than does the same proportion injure one who re- 
ceives twice as much. The laborer whose family num- 
bers six can better afford to pay ten dollars rent when he 
receives fifty dollars a month than he can pay five with 
wages at twenty-five. He has a much brighter hope of 
being able to extricate himself from the power of rent 
when he receives fifty than when he receives half of that. 
Oppressions, burdens, always rest most heavily on the 
weak, always pursue the weak while the stronger have 
a possibility of escape or partial escape by the throwing 
off of a portion of the weights. 

Direct rents and the evils of communities being owned 
by individuals are not the only financial ways in which 
labor is made to contribute to the graspings of the land 
monopolist. Labor is made to bear through the lower- 
ing of wages the expenses of rents in one form or an- 
other when employers are so unfortunate as to be under 
power of this inequality. 

Every time a rent paying employer is forced to reduce 
wages his employes enlarge their proportionate contri- 
bution to the landholder. Of course this is true of other 
classes as well. Merchants, tradesmen of all sorts and 
commercial enterprises of all kinds are compelled to 
hand out as rents a considerable percentage of yearly 
profits. These are disguised under various forms of busi- 
ness necessities, increased prices frequently being the 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 71 

form assumed. The rent goes to the individuals or com- 
panies enabled by law and custom to draw from the help- 
less sums of money immense in the aggregate and im- 
portant, sometimes ruinous in single instances. The 
patrons of such enterprises, the consumers of wealth 
fitted for use on rent producing lands, are also made to 
contribute in increased prices to the landholder's purse. 
The prices fixed by the necessities of rent will be upheld 
by non-renting producers, or the competition growing 
out of the unequal conditions to success will force out 
the rent payers and so virtual monopolization is made 
practicable. The non-renters through advantages pos- 
sessed by the fact of their being non-renters, left to en- 
counter less opposition, find combinations easier and 
more profitable in the main. The inability of rent pay- 
ing enterprises to maintain a high wage rate is the ad- 
vantage of non-renters always, the disadvantage of rent- 
ers always. The standard set here will be followed by all 
hirers, subject to local and temporary variations, until 
such a time as combinations for the purpose of destroy- 
ing competition enters. Then wages may be in specific 
industries advanced until opposition is forced out, and 
competition in that line by so much destroyed, wages 
will go down by decree of monopolization enforced by 
the competition discharged workers will bring into the 
wage market. Nothing short of monopoly destruction 
will sweep away this condition of failure. Nothing short 
of nationalization of land will level this obstacle to com- 
mon success, grasping as the land feature does the whole 
industrial life of our nation. Land free to users would 
abolish the deadly competition that attends the rent sys- 
tem. Land free to users would dissolve monopoliza- 
tions that make our rent system doubly effective. If no 
one man is given a power over land exclusive of its use 
by all others he will have no power to take the greater 



72 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

part of his brother man's earnings as rent and he will 
not be able to deprive other men of the use of land which 
he himself does not use. He will not be found doling 
out the mineral gifts of nature at rates enriching to him- 
self and unfair to the rest of mankind. He will not with- 
hold from any the right to succeed. 

Rents levied and collected in the way we know are 
greatly above what they would be under a system that 
taxed in a legitimate way and for a legitimate purpose. 
The land system of to-day, handed down from the past, 
is one chapter in the world's great book recording spe- 
cial privileges to special bodies. Its commentary is to 
be read in the appended pages often glanced over care- 
lessly or ignored, telling of the weight of oppression re- 
sulting from an order that enables one man in a few 
years to collect millions of wealth from millions of his 
fellow creatures. 

No man has a moral right to hold or control more land 
than he can or does use in the prosecution of his business. 
What he has beyond his needs in this line is sure to re- 
strict some other one in a society where the volume of 
population pressing against the land supply makes rents 
possible. Land is a fixed quantity. The numbers and 
needs of the race are increasing quantities. The necessi- 
ties of the race measured against the land supply deter- 
mines the rent rate, when the land is subject to private 
control. Rent rates under a nationalized system would 
be determined by the needs of government measured 
against the value of the land. By private control rents 
are as high as the necessities for land make possible, be- 
cause being a private monopoly but one force determines 
the rate and that force is the needs of the people governed 
by the numbers of people demanding land. Proximity to 
business centers, desirability for commercial purposes, are 
but features of this demand. The pressing of population 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 73 

toward a certain point increases the rent rates of that 
point. By national control the total rent for land would 
be equal to governmental expenses and would in no place 
exceed the proportional value of that place compared with 
other places, unless the people chose to put money into 
the national treasury as a wealth reserve by paying rents 
above the demands of government for actual expenses. 

The events of every-day life argue the injustice of pri- 
vate, immutable control of the land element of life and 
progress. High rents confine children to squalid tene- 
ments — pens, rather than homes. High rents deny to the 
worker the right of self-employment keeping him in the 
employ of another, where he must work for whatever 
wages at whatever hours his employer demands; or 
the same cause forces him into idleness if the wage rolls 
are filled without him. High rents keep out competition 
in what we call a competitive system. By preventing 
competition is established monopoly for those who have 
grasped opportunities, making worker to compete with 
worker for a place, consumer to compete with consumer 
for goods. Monopolizers and those who control opportu- 
nities do not compete with one another; they combine. 
Occasionally the combination is for the purpose of de- 
stroying a weak member of their order or for the purpose 
of keeping out a threatened invasion of their ranks. 
Usually, in the manipulation of prices the combination is 
for the purpose of fleecing the rest of the commercial 
world or in the regulation of wages to take the advantage 
of labor their control of opportunities makes possible. 
Land letting as a means of livelihood is not legitimate 
business in a moral sense ; it is slave dealing, tyranny, in 
its economic and social results. No man should by either 
law or customs be permitted to control land on which an- 
other man must live. Land being a necessity to life and 
subject to control, should be controlled by the state. No 



74 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

man should be permitted to extract rents from the pro- 
ductions of land users, but since production issues from 
application of labor to land, all rents levied upon land 
should be regulated and collected by the entire people for 
the public good. Private control of natural resources is 
the surest way to inequalities in the economic relations of 
the people because it renders opportunities unequal. Man, 
given control of land that God, not he, neither laws nor 
customs can create, will abuse the inherent rights of the 
race to it by oppressive rents, monopolized opportunities, 
and the many ways in which these work to the injury of 
those from whom the control of land has been wrested. 

The world of mankind owes no man a living, but man- 
kind owe every individual member of the family an op- 
portunity to make a living, free from the preyings of un- 
holy greed and protected from the oppressions of covetous 
avarice. Mankind owe this so much to each individual 
that they are self-compelled by force of soul conviction 
to establish charities for the unfortunate in all things, 
schools for the ignorant and churches for those in spiritual 
darkness, that these may continue to live and may know 
how to be happy and good. 

Yet to what cross purposes we play. While none may 
suffer if within the reach of the gentle hand of charity, 
we doom thousands, by fact of their birth, to dependence 
on the kindness of others if they would live. Is it not bet- 
ter, much better, to make it possible for all to earn an 
independent livelihood than to support by charity those 
who are able and anxious to do, this better from an 
economic consideration as from a moral standpoint? The 
essential part is, give all a chance. The rest will adjust 
itself if it be adjustable, which it will prove to be, largely. 
At the least hopeful view there is a state nearer adjust- 
ment of all moral and commercial forces than we now 
know. Trades-unions, party platform resolutions, help- 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 75 

less acknowledgments of errors or futile words meant to 
call attention to what none but the most stone-blind fail to 
see, the most stubbornly perverse fail to admit. These do 
not suggest remedies broad enough for the evils of which 
complaint is made. 

Efforts at wage regulations through compulsion of em- 
ployers strike, lifeless, at the errors they make pretense of 
correcting. Their presence shows one hopeful sign, and 
that, the awakening of the world. Eight hour demands 
are good as evidence of these inclinations, anti-child 
labor agitations are expressive of humanitarian growth. 
Minimum wage rates and maximum of requirements point 
the direction from which the gale is setting in. But they 
are all mere conservatisms. Agitator, lawgiver, your 
misused brother for whom you seek a fraction of justice 
would labor sixteen hours a day if he could find two mas- 
ters to employ him or one who would give him two days' 
work in one or even one day's pay for two days' work 
rather than see his little ones suffer, so peculiarly consti- 
tuted is the human heart. He would see his budding girl 
work amid loathsome surroundings at a time when she 
should be carefully nurtured and nobly schooled rather 
than have her suffer greater want or buy bread at the 
price of her soul when her father at an eight-hour day at 
minimum wages cannot care for her. This is the father 
care the father love will exercise. He will even lie and 
teach his child to lie that she may evade your well meant 
protection, and work, for life is dear and hunger's fangs 
are keen. If he cannot of his own efforts secure enough 
to support the little ones he will let them help, in the piti- 
ful and sorrowful kindness he must show his own. 
Brother, agitator or lawgiver, you would work for sixty 
cents a day if you could not get a dollar, and so will he 
for whom you wrestle in your kindness of heart, sincere, 
though you blunder much. You cannot compel the op- 



76 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

pressor to ease the load he has laid on labor while you 
leave labor powerless to be his own emancipator. You 
cannot compel the monopolizer to give labor a certain por- 
tion of the goods he creates while your every act and law 
declares the irrefragable right of monopoly to the control 
of those goods, while you deny labor all but the portion 
monopoly chooses to give, subject to the puny regula- 
tions you may seek to impose, the little you can force 
monopoly to give. 

Futilities and impotencies have had a day sufficiently 
prolonged to convince of their true natures. Conservat- 
isms in demands and acts have proven but sops to whet 
the cormorant appetites of monopolism. Timid souls 
gather up courage to present a conservative measure or 
mildly demand a conservative measure, and trusts and 
monopolies smile and ignore both the demand and the 
measure. Bold spirits propose radicalism and monopoly 
and trusts look hurt and begin to tremble for the safety 
of the country. Then conservatives take fright and array 
themselves against radicals and plutocracy fastens another 
shackle to labor. The past efforts at adjustment of differ- 
ences in beginnings and ends have been educative and use- 
ful to a degree. They have shown the spirit and aim of 
the plutocratic powers, if such powers really needed a 
demonstration as to their ultimate intentions. The efforts 
have not helped labor beyond a preparation for a stronger 
demand. 

The letting of deposits in either the precious or useful 
minerals, or any resource of natural wealth, to private 
parties for their personal aggrandizement is a colossal 
mistake and a most atrocious wrong against the users 
of these gifts. Since they are not the result of industry 
and cannot be produced by human effort but are supplied 
by the beneficence of creative power they should be free 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 77 

to the equal enjoyment of all, governed by the necessities 
of the users. These supplies are fixed in quantity. The 
volume of them nature has supplied is all we shall ever 
have, although man in the process of development may 
bring out acceptable substitutes for many of them, and 
thus add to the store of supplies they now fill. But until 
then, and even then the mass of people should not be de- 
prived of the use of these riches at the lowest possible 
cost. The fact of their being of a nature rendering them 
subject to appropriation does not in one iota of man to 
man justice and right support the appropriation by 
private parties. They are as necessary to the progress 
and happiness of man as land is necessary to life. 

The prevailing method of dealing with these, turning 
them over to the extortion of private control, largely in- 
creases the burdens of labor by still further reducing the 
power of wages to the extent the personal wealth of this 
class of monopolizers is increased by the unjust gain on 
the necessities so governed. This injustice is to all, but 
bears most distressingly on labor because of labor's 
meager funds. It also bears on labor indirectly in the 
same way rents affect labor in their indirect influence in 
addition to their direct operation. The contributions of 
wages-paying concerns to the demands of monopolizers 
increase business expenses and so increase prices to con- 
sumers until such a time as competition and combination 
enter to drive them out. This increase in expenses also, 
doubtless, has a local and temporary influence on wages, 
although wages will ultimately be fixed by the necessities 
of laborers governed by their ability to command wages. 
In all the disadvantages listed against the money-wage 
worker, the worker whose wages are his products shares, 
although the operation must vary. He must exchange 
more of his goods for these necessities, which, in effect, 
lowers his wages. He must exchange more products 



78 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

for a given amount of the products of those industries 
wherein the consumption of monopolized productions 
entered. The added expenses of production operate in 
this way and to added expenses are added increased profits 
on the entire transaction. 

If it be said that these added expenses are too small to 
be of any real importance, it may be stated as a fact of 
undeniable significance that no wrong is a small matter. 
One may be less burdensome in the proportion of its im- 
portance, but little or great, wrong is wrong in the slight- 
est degree of existence. The expense increase through 
the use of a single ton of coal in a factory where coal is 
a necessity to production is infinitesimal in proportion to 
the total of expenses. The profits to the coal field people 
that the factory must pay on thousands of tons yearly 
are not small. Expenses of leases and other forms of rent 
are not small. The sum of all increases inseparable from 
private control of industrial forces represents the robbery 
of labor and much loss between the price of production 
plus a reasonable profit and the price at which productions 
reach consumers. 

Wages under present management are much below 
what they would be if industrial development should 
be put on a profit-sharing plan. Then would labor 
share in the values created by labor. Should state control 
succeed the prevailing method wages would go up. When 
the public assumes a monopoly to conduct it for the peo- 
ple there is no selfish private end to be served, and wages 
in government work are always above what are paid by 
private enterprises where the same or greater devotion 
and service is required of employes. Power of wage 
regulation, crowding down to the lowest possible figure, 
is a feature of monopolization by individuals, the privilege 
of private appropriation. It is one means of revenue to 
the men who appropriate and monopolize. 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 79 

The impediments we place in the path of progress by 
our way of dealing with these vital obligations are incal- 
culable in their results. The more important an item the 
stricter its limitations of control. We call iron the metal 
of civilization, and restrict its fullest use by the compli- 
cated action of private ownership of deposits and further 
hinder its command by users through action of tariff 
laws that yet more increase its price. Coal, the companion 
mineral of iron, without which the former is well-nigh 
useless in this age, we deny the people free or even reason- 
ably free access to in the same way. Salt, a necessity 
to life, is likewise rendered dear. The precious metals 
are mined by private industry and subject to private 
ownership and sold to the government that the govern- 
ment may have money — may buy money! The list is 
endless, or ends only with the telling of nature's bounties. 
The hindrances to production this method of handling 
fastens on the people, the direct injury to users, cannot 
be measured. The losses to the people as computed by 
the wealth of operators of these fields and mines are an 
approximation of the financial loss only. The graver 
losses as of opportunity arid equality in industrial spheres, 
whose results speak in the undesirable lots of the wronged 
are beyond computation by human calculation. 

We speak of these natural resources as being sold to 
their controllers, or by some other named trick as passing 
into their hands without reservation as to development 
or the control of their products. Such cannot be sold, 
or in any true sense be disposed of in this way. There 
is a law of nature, transcending man-made laws, whereby 
man is rendered incapable of selling his own, his brother's 
and his child's right to live. This he essays to do when 
he claims to sell land. This mock power he attempts to 
delegate to government when he permits government to 
dispose of his, his brother's and his child's heirship to 



80 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

land. Government can have no power in the control of 
land beyond holding it for the use of those who need it. 
This is the office of government, as much the governing 
and preserving of life resources as governing in the com- 
monly accepted sense. Society cannot take away the right 
to land since land rights are life rights. Society can take 
away life for certain criminal offenses, but living, being 
born into the world, is not an offense to be punished by 
the deprivation of life rights. It cannot be made an 
offense on the part of the living and conditions equaling 
persecution for living should not be tolerated. 

Competition, and monopolization of wealth resources 
and opportunities to production, crush the lower class and 
are consuming the middle class. They have no share 
in the profits accruing to competition ; they are sufferers, 
rather, because of it for of their productions come 
profits to one-sided competition. They make monopoliza- 
tion profitable to the monopolizers since they must satisfy 
the price of monopoly. 

The high rates of service in lighting, water and trans- 
portation, — in all features to our modern industrial life 
are directly lowering to wages to the degree in which 
these services exceed in price a reasonable expense. When 
these services are furnished by private enterprise rates are 
double, sometimes treble what the same or better service 
would be provided by state or municipal ownership and 
control. All reports showing this condition carry the 
recommendation to public seizure. Profits on inflated 
stock is a trick known to private monopolizers, which in 
effect doubles the otherwise great profits they make. 
These profits are drawn from labor for service in whatever 
the line may be. Inflation serves to give regularity and 
the sanction of businesslike methods to what would other- 
wise stand as stark robbery. In public control this would 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 81 

find no place for the business then as now would be con- 
ducted for the profit of owners. Where the people are 
the owners, the profit will go to the people, in whatever 
the profit may consist. 

The strength of monopoly will always be found arrayed 
against the strength of the people, the demands of 
monopoly are ever opposed to the prosperity of those 
without the ring. The factors to wealth production that 
monopoly controls all must have, if not in actual pos- 
session, in the fact of goods produced. This is well known 
to the former. As monopolizers by combinations and 
powers inherent in monopoly can command two bushels 
of wheat and two days' labor for goods or service that 
should exchange for one bushel or one day's work, they 
have been enriched at the expense of wheat producers 
and laborers to the value of one bushel and one day's 
service. In the control of this private industry the 
monopolizer through the decline in labor prices is able to 
demand two days' work for what was formerly the pay 
for one day's work, and by power of combinations all 
monopolizers can maintain prices in their products while 
the branches of industry that have so far found combina- 
tion impossible cannot protect their products' prices. 

The demands of the monopoly masters are far from 
modest. They, having come into the control of resources, 
are anxious to develop them that labor may be employed 
and the world of commercial unions perform its complex 
work. Such at least is their profession and we have ac- 
cepted it in good part. They ask for protective measures 
that the protected may be enabled to pay increased wages ; 
controlling the productive forces, they stop production or 
limit it if their requests are not acceded to. They ask 
for franchises and other encouragements that the people 
may be served. These are usually granted with specifica- 
tions that enable the holders to become enriched beyond 
6 



82 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the returns of reasonable profits. Nearly all industries 
working under legislative encouragements could be car- 
ried on by the communify at a much less expense to 
public service and much better service would be rendered, 
but it is the almost invariable rule to turn these enterprises 
over to private control and profit that private parties may 
give wages to workers and reap riches from the neces- 
sities of those they profess to render unreserved benefits. 
They ask for anything and everything in sight or promise 
of realization and as inducements hold out the hope of 
wages to workmen and prosperity to the people if legisla- 
tion will kindly give them permission to put their hands 
into the public pocket and take all they find there. 

Land being necessary to life its freedom to workers 
is essential to the common prosperity. Land control is 
control of the fruits of land, and so, is wage control. 
There is a fancy and affectation to scoff at the charge of 
land monopoly. It is said that one man will not get pos- 
session of all land, that even a few will not gain owner- 
ship, therefore harmful control cannot follow private 
ownership ; that fears on this score are vain and the results 
of such control are but the ridiculous phantasies of over- 
apprehensive minds. But it does not need that one or 
even a thousand should become sole title-holders to the 
earth that the landed powers may prove restrictive to 
prosperity and fatal to even life, in degrees. Competition 
is not among landholders ; they do not seek men, entreat- 
ing them to live on land. Men without land seek them, 
promising them from twenty-five to fifty per cent, of their 
productions for the privilege of living on land. All land- 
lord's ambitions and interests are the same and the law 
of rent is as fixed and certain as that ancient one which 
altered not. More hopeless of evasion, for there are no 
subterfuges for its defeat; all men must have land. The 
essence of monopoly works the work of monopoly. Ex- 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 83 

tortion will follow privilege and the results of monopoly 
will run in the wake of monopoly conditions as darkness 
pursues the setting sun. If a monopoly exercised by one 
would be harmful the conditions to monopoly will make 
their exercise by any number less than the total equally 
harmful to those outside monopoly. In a monopoly con- 
trolling coal production the wrong to consumers is great, 
but coal is not the only source of heat. The sun's rays 
and the economy in fuel possible by recent inventions 
and discoveries lessen the evils that would otherwise 
attend this monopoly power. Many localities depend ex- 
clusively on wood, the supply of which is subject to 
renewal, and although this supply is under monopoly con- 
ditions the resources for heat are diverse enough to lessen 
the effects of a limited, a fixed quantity of heat-producing 
supplies in one line. 

Very few of the movable necessaries of life are subject 
to restrictions that render their distribution under the 
arbitrary will and regulation of one class. There are 
substitutes and evasions, and although their control works 
most unjust results when governed by private monopoly, 
if freedom of production is guaranteed men will live and 
command these necessities. But for land there is no sub- 
stitute. Evasion of its use is impossible. None can dis- 
pense with it. None can live without its products. An 
element to life that exists in fixed quantity cannot be 
governed by monopoly conditions, cannot be controlled 
by a part of those who must use it, without the gravest 
injury to those who must secure its use through permis- 
sion of title-holders. It is plain that if I must have land 
upon which to produce wealth forms which by exchange 
bring me the varying products I must have, the man to 
whom society has made over the control of the only por- 
tion I can use will be able to take of my products such 
portion as he pleases. He may take a certain per cent. 



84 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

which in effect makes me his slave-adjunct of land for 
two or three days out of every six in the week. He will 
take just such portion as I find I can give him and myself 
be able to live upon the rest and work. If there is no 
more land to be used, he will not accept my standard as 
the standard of living, but will take more and more of 
my earnings until he sees I am at a point where no more 
can be taken and I continue to live and produce wealth 
for him. Beyond this point he will not compel me, for 
what will it profit a landholder to take the whole product 
and lose his renter by starvation? He will even have a 
dead pauper to bury, which is not profitable rent rates. 
If two be working on his land when one could well care 
for it he will lose nothing by letting one starve, not even 
the burial expense, for that he will take out of the pro- 
ducts of the other. ) 

Fear and conjecture as to the possible outcome need 
not to be predicted for the future ; nor need they be based 
on suppositional limitations of landholders. Speculations 
may be dispensed with so far as practical application is 
necessary to demonstrate the merciless enslavement of 
mankind to monopolistic powers. Wage rates and rent 
rates speak for themselves. The lives of the toiling mil- 
lions speak yet more eloquently, with damning emphasis.. 
The lives of a land-ruled people do not promise for the 
future. The years to come are darker for them than is. 
the present. Not that the landholders will kill off the 
people or crowd them into the sea to keep them off the 
landholders' land. Oh, no. The land would avail them 
little that way. It is the people, the press of population 
that makes landholding profitable. It is the struggle, the 
competition for the most desirable land, ultimately for 
land of any kind, that yields golden harvests to land- 
holders. A square fo./ot of land in Greater New York is 
more profitable to th e landholder than hundreds of acres 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 85 

in the less populous mid-west. Time was when that same 
land was no more profitable than a like area in the mid- 
west, but that was when people were few there, too. 
People come together for mutual profit and help, and the 
landholder is enriched by their coming. Land in the mid- 
west will one day command great rents, but after the 
spreading populations of New York and other like cen- 
ters have crowded it to a point nearing the limit. The 
more people the merrier — for the landholder, and the more 
profitable. Yes, the people will be permitted to live on 
the landholder's land, such people at least as continue to 
pay the rent. 

It is very simple and altogether undeniable; if I must 
secure permission of a landholder to live on his land, when 
he denies me the privilege I must cease to live — on his 
land. There is other land, but other landholders may be 
of the same mind. If I must secure permission by paying 
rent, I must cease to use the land when I am no longer 
able to pay the rent, though it be exorbitant to a degree 
of robbery. I cannot make terms, for though there be 
other land there are other workers, and the second land- 
holder will be of the same mind as the first. Rents are 
fixed by the necessities of myself and fellow-workers and I 
must pay the rent asked or do without the land. If the 
rent consumes one-fourth my earnings, I must pay it; if 
three-fourths, I must pay it. So must any one who uses 
the land pay one-fourth or three-fourths of the same 
earnings if competition for land crowds workers to the 
first or last necessity. 

Land free to labor would lift this load from producers. 
Labor is helpless while quiescently sanctioning the distri- 
bution of opportunities that places the class at the mercy 
of monopoly. While monopoly controls land labor will 
pay ready tribute, willingly or unwillingly, realizing it 
or not. The issue has moved beyond one of temporizing 



86 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

conservatisms, high tariffs or low, trusts, finance and 
what not. These are only a few of many difficulties 
crowding for recognition, wrongs calling for redress. 
They are not in themselves causes. They are results 
entailing other results. They will cease in all pernicious 
qualities when their source is destroyed. The matter has 
resolved itself into one great query suggested by the state 
into which we have fallen, — shall we continue or shall 
we cease, shall we succeed or fully and deliberately fail? 
There are too many phases to the question considered 
singly, not one of which, not all of which, settled by the 
wisdom of more than man can result in permanent benefi- 
cence. The quieting of one or many of them would afford 
only a transitory respite. 

The profits that tariff destruction would bring to con- 
sumers of goods taxed in this way would be speedily 
swallowed up by other forms of favoritism. A stable 
and increasing currency, suited to the needs of an increas- 
ing demand would fill the coffers of monopoly the fuller. 
Trusts, heaven defend us! How can the stream cease 
to flow if the source be not stayed or destroyed ? Trusts 
are but the inevitable consequences of monopolizations, 
unavoidable and indestructible while monopoly continues, 
impossible without monopolizations and specializations by 
legislation. Reform must work from the source to be 
effective. The whole must be renovated to work justice 
to all. The saving to labor in tariff abolitions would re- 
quire but a short time to be diverted to rent. The saving 
would be a virtual increase of wages, increase of produc- 
tion in control by labor. As land, a primary factor to 
labor becomes more productive, rent increases. At once 
rent increase would consume a percentage of the saving 
to labor by tariff abolitions. Rents working to the point 
where all labor will contribute to rent the excess of pro- 
duction above bare subsistence, in time rent would con- 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 87 

sume the full profit. So would it be with all other frac- 
tional reforms. 

Land monopolization is the source of labor's helpless- 
ness. Being deprived of the fullest land use, being bur- 
dened with rent, labor must sacrifice more and ever 
more to the land power as competition for land grows. 
This draws a sharp distinction between the interests of 
landholders and those who are not landholders. The dis- 
tinction grows with the growing needs for land which 
each new soul creates. Land power is life power, the 
more the living the more profitable the power. 

We are told by the apologist and defender of existing 
conditions that wages in dollars and cents are higher now 
than at some period in the remote past. This is true for 
one substantial reason that the world's money volume is 
greater many times over than at the time pointed out. 
They insist that the laborer of to-day enjoys privileges 
unknown and beyond command by the ancient monarch, 
but this is true because these things were not then realized 
in the world, not because the laborer has made up some of 
the distance that has always separated his life in all de- 
tails from that of his antithesis. Then the laborer trudged 
footsore while his man-styled superior was conveyed in 
clumsy vehicle or jogged on horseback. Now the laborer 
rides at sixty or more miles per hour, as is boasted, but 
he rides with the poorest accommodations while his oppo- 
site travels in palace cars, by special trains fitted with 
a sumptuousness undreamed in the wildest flights of the 
ancient mind. Then both laborer and rich man paid tri- 
bute to the robber bands infesting the highways, each 
paying in proportion to ability. Now the laborer pays 
tribute to monopoly for privileges of rapid locomotion 
and monopoly rides free of expense but such as is paid by 
the laborer in rates on produce and taxes in different 



88 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

forms, by which taxes monopoly is able to maintain and 
operate railways. 

The increase that actually appears in contrasting the 
past with the present is that of productive power and the 
wealth aggregate constantly in evidence as testimony to 
this increased power. But, who creates the wealth? 
Midas may furnish the tools, from capital, we say. But 
how got Midas capital over what the poorest of his beg- 
gar-workers got? Was Midas a swifter, surer workman 
that created more wealth; was he economical that he 
saved up gold? We say he has the golden touch. We 
make like explanation of the lives of all who direct their 
every move into gold-bearing fruits. Thus, the man who 
secures a franchise and bleeds every one who deals with 
that franchise power, is said to be gifted with the golden 
touch. The man, or the few men who by a system of 
monopolizations control a branch of industry in a whole 
country are said to be developers of the country's re- 
sources. 

Comparisons, if honestly made and carried out in detail, 
prove quite the opposite of what they are wished to con- 
vey when introduced to show that the gain in advantages 
should be considered with an eye single to the glory of 
existing conditions and a purpose single to their perpetu- 
ation on behalf of labor. Those who measure labor's 
condition by comparison with the past must apply the 
same test to the changed situation of the privileged 
classes. If no discrepancy in favor of the latter appears, 
then may it be said that the worker has held his own. If 
differences in comparative results do stand revealed the 
jugglery in comparisons must be said to have had its day, 
must make its confused excuses and pass out with kindred 
so-called arguments in favor of existing conditions. 

Those who draw comfort from the fact that labor in 
money wages is paid in amount above the rates of other 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 89 

times should note that the high-water mark in wage rates 
has been reached and that late years show a decrease 
from what was the rate a few years back. Whether that 
is for or against wage workers must appear from their 
commercial environs as the value of wage-money like 
that of all money depends upon the power of purchase the 
money represents. This aside, we know that workers 
have not shared in the wealth they have fashioned; we 
know that opportunities are closing to them. In the 
space of a generation wealth centralization such as we 
know and destitution such as millions suffer cannot mani- 
fest unless to some are given undue privileges and from 
others are taken rights. The comparative wage suffi- 
ciency against living necessities to-day contrasted with 
those of the past are not to be satisfactorily determined. 
The variations in demands make tables of little worth. 
The changing demands of social life aside from animal 
necessities are features tables cannot reckon with. As a 
total summing of needs and the ability of workers to sat- 
isfy them we do know that the wage-worker and producer 
are falling behind, while lower than these the tide of indi- 
gence and idleness is being swelled by those who are 
crowded out of the wage lists and all ranks of self-employ- 
ing. We do know that pauperism increases and that 
producers, by the operations of monopolized industries 
and industry sources, are being robbed in great part of 
their natural rewards. 

That wages fall with the settlement and development of 
new countries is a fact universally noted. When this fact 
is introduced and enlarged upon in support of conditions 
here, those who take it up with that object strengthen the 
indictment they seek to destroy. It is an endorsement 
of all the anti-monopolist can say, an admission of all ac- 
cusations and claims of the socialist. If wages fall as 
private control of resources in a country progresses, then 



90 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the prevention of such lowering is to be accomplished 
through the prevention of private control. If the open 
resources characteristic of new countries make wages 
good in the first settlements wages can be kept good by 
keeping resources open to labor. The argument made in 
this apology for growing differences in wealth distribution 
establishes the cause of those who plead for equality in 
opportunity. 

The curse of our land system rests heavily on us. 
The burden would be felt by now had no outside influ- 
ences on wage rates added to its evils. It is augmented 
by the yearly arrival of thousands from foreign lands who 
seek homes here, helping with the native increase to ex- 
pand the values of landholders' possessions. The desira- 
bility or undesirability of foreign arrivals does not alter 
the law of rent. Every added soul taking up a residence 
with us still more contributes to the power of land monop- 
oly. We have no place for these newcomers but on some 
possession of the rent extorter. The public domain is 
practically absorbed and so eliminated from our list of 
assets. Emigrants settle in wage districts where aside 
from the wage feature they conflict with the interests of 
established workers by land competition as developed in 
higher rents; this is as positive as wage competition, 
though not as easily to be recognized. These labor cen- 
ters are being crowded further by the numbers yearly 
being dropped from the farming element. There is no 
place for wage-earning population overflows but in the 
fields and workshops of monopoly. Added numbers 
make rents in these centers higher and increase prices of 
foods. Added labor seekers increase competition among 
workers and so increase the power of the monopo- 
lizers of resources. The profit of the earth is for all, yet 
the landholder reaps the whole profit. Labor receives 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 91 

wages sufficient to maintain life as the rule of recom- 
pense. 

Rents will go up with population increase as will all 
uses of land become dearer if the use is regulated by the 
law of private gains served by the power of private con- 
trol. Private ownership of land approaches by control of 
opportunities, evils growing to be insupportable. With 
special legislation and land privileges for the rich and all 
things working together for the power of some and en- 
slavement of many others, who so wise or gifted with 
powers of discernment as to be able to see where these will 
lead us to or what they will lead us through if right be not 
soon enthroned in the management of affairs where wrong 
has so long held sway. 

This question of work and wages, whether wages be 
money received for service or wages in products, is with 
us a question of living or dying. Dying singly as indi- 
viduals from lack of nourishment, and dying in other 
senses from other causes; dying collectively as a nation 
from lack of simple honesty. It has grown to be a 
sphinx-riddle waiting for answer by Americans. The 
answer to where? being from oppression, to whither? 
being to oppression, will get us devoured of our own 
greed. It would be as well to attempt no answer. At 
present proportions it will not much longer brook neg- 
lect ; at short lengths it will not satisfy in the contempt of 
make-believes in party platforms, resolutions of respect 
and sympathy, our favorite modes of putting off final 
solutions when elections pend or other occasions demand 
an expression of sentiment, a drift toward solution. 

When special occasions occur we settle it — in this way, 
and those seem to be the only times we care to pretend an 
interest in a settlement. Few things are so precious in 
the politician's love as the worker — just before election, 



92 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

and to those who have made a trade of politics we have 
too much given the work of answering the sphinx-riddle. 
Few things are more out of sight, out of mind, than our 
real difficulties after election. Fair promises and prom- 
ises unfair serve to keep the voters in line in campaigns 
and on election days; after that the state or national 
militia relieves the politician of law preserving until next 
campaign time. Nations jobbing political issues do not 
get the settlements that abide; the jobbers have too much 
to do looking after personal interests and setting wires 
for re-election. With guardians like these, the real cares 
of state, — an earnest attempt to preserve the rights and 
enforce the duties of all, are but accidental to the main 
end of self. Rights of the strong, rights of the weak, 
duties of both as citizens. The jealous guarding of 
national integrity and honor, more to the weakest member 
of our nation than in bellicose demand for apology from 
a fifth-rate power that has shown us some immaterial 
disrespect. Hope and justice held out to the downhearted 
toiler, the same to all his brothers of high and low degree. 
Nor is the capitalistic employer of labor a fit guardian 
of labor's rights, and such power should not be delegated 
to one whose interests under our perversions are so 
antagonistic; neither should these rights be committed 
to the keeping of those who listen to the capitalistic em- 
ployer while turning an unhearing ear to the voices of 
those who speak for labor. Monopoly-capital does not 
maintain its expensive lobbies for the sole purpose of 
guarding labor's interests as might be supposed from the 
protestations of solicitude indulged. The records of their 
efforts do not bear out their claim. 

Labor, too, has had its lobby, the most notable one that 
has met at Washington in years. Perhaps the very most 
notable ever convened in that city where lobbying has 
reached a state of notability which might be called an art. 



MONOPOLY AND WAGES 93 

This, the most notable, went by box car, by foot, by wagon 
and all manners of locomotion known to the unpreten- 
tious, and reached the city on the Potomac in varying 
stages of dilapidation and jumble. True, the leaders were 
arrested ; happy country if like fate had befallen the class 
ever. The leaders made one egregious blunder ; they tres- 
passed on the grass. They did not know the only trespass 
they could with impunity commit was on the rights of the 
people. They had not learned the etiquette of assemblies 
at Washington, with whom man's rights are a thing of 
contempt and grass sacred. The lobby accomplished noth- 
ing, the notablest that ever met, notable in that it had no 
influence on legislation, that it lobbied for the people; 
well would it be if lobbies were ever representative of so 
great a class. The representation may have been rough 
and only half true. The representations convened on 
Potomac's banks are oftentimes only half true, often 
wholly untrue. That the lobby came unto their own and 
were received not tells nothing as to the justification and 
real worth. It is a way the world of legislative bodies 
that are only half true have, have ever had. England saw 
similar demonstrations by wronged citizens with parallel 
temporary results before one great blot could be removed 
from her national statutes and one great curse lifted from 
the lives of many English people. The greetings to that 
lobby from those who understood and those who under- 
stood not were of the kind that have since the world began 
been extended to like bodies. Contumely and jeers, even 
threats, are the only words of encouragement extended 
by those who fear to those who dare be brave. 



CHAPTER IV. 

LAND AND TAXATION. 

To deny a child of earth the right to land on which to 
live is to deny his right to live by taking from him an ele- 
ment to life. To make his needs in this respect the source 
of tribute to private powers is to give those who control 
land power over human life and activity in all spheres. 
To deny his use of land in the prosecution of industry 
when that same use does not interfere with the better use 
of some other one, is to deprive him of the inherent right 
to supply the demands of material existence and in ulti- 
mate is to virtually deny him the right to live by depriv- 
ing him of the power to minister to the necessities of 
existence in the body. To give any private power the 
privilege of taxing him for such use of land as he finds 
necessary to his support is to tax him for the offense 
of living and in favor of those who must live by the same 
means. To give any private power the right to withhold 
land from his use by arbitrary choice or through the 
medium of impossible rents, is to deny his right to live 
in favor of those whose natural rights are equal but no 
greater than his own in the provisions of nature, the neces- 
sities to life. To grant that land is necessary to life is to 
grant these conclusions. The principle of private land 
control gives complete life and death power over those 
who do not own land. As ordinarily developed, this 
power is exercised by regulations and restrictions in pro- 
duction and distribution, by regulations and restrictions 
in land uses. 



LAND AND TAXATION 95 

Our land system is based on the supposed idea that the 
greater part of the race are an unfortunate encumbrance 
and we are driven to the use of the most potent method 
short of direct destruction to make life for them unde- 
sirable and doubtful. So much we concede to the doctrine 
of chance rule. But in fact we make the numbers a 
blessing to those controlling opportunities. Society taxes 
all, workers in greater proportion to their means, on the 
products of labor, as if their creations were an injury to 
the world. Thereby is restricted the control of wealth 
in the amount seized by society; thereby is limited wealth 
production in the amount which the tax consumes might 
act in capital for the production of more wealth. But 
before society can claim its share the tax collected by in- 
dividuals for the foothold of earth upon which workers 
must stand to labor and live must be satisfied. The 
first mentioned tax is levied by a legitimate power 
although placing restrictions upon what, within reasonable 
limits, should be encouraged by all fair means. The 
second is in itself dangerous to society by the institution 
of two classes : those who demand tribute and those who 
render tribute. Its continuation accentuates the primal 
differences between these classes, increasing the power 
exercised against those who have not, increasing the help- 
lessness of the same class. It is raised from a source 
over which society as a whole should exercise control, 
being a source of life and social prosperity. 

So long as labor is taxed in the smallest fraction for 
the possession of self-created products, production is that 
much discouraged and life for the producers is made that 
much less desirable and pleasant. There is a sacred, a 
divine right of property, and of the man who has grown 
a bushel of corn on a few square feet of earth it should 
be said, It is his, for he caused it to appear; of the man 
who builds himself a house comfortable and pleasant to 



96 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

look upon, It is his, for he builded it. Society may justly 
insist on his paying a tax for the ground the one excludes 
others from in the corn culture or the other in the site 
of the building and its grounds, but neither should be 
fined for the possession of the corn or house or the bene- 
fits either confers. These products make the producers 
happier, and, ordinarily, better, and therefore more de- 
sirable members of society, blessing themselves and the 
world through their efforts and the unrestricted posses- 
sion of products. Neither form of production discourages 
other producers. They are both, in fact, incentives to 
effort to all who behold them. Some other man will raise 
wheat to exchange for corn, another man will pattern a 
house after the first, improving as his genius may upon 
the architecture of the other. But other men are born 
who must use land too; all may confer together and 
decide upon the amount the first four may pay to the 
entire community for this exclusive use of the land as 
their possession will compel others to take up and improve 
poor lands, or to move out of the circle of easy exchange 
to a region where land is not already in use. By such an 
arrangement the community says to competitors for the 
most desirable land, You must all have land and it is the 
business of government to preserve equality in oppor- 
tunity among its subjects. Here is land in different stages 
of productiveness. Those who use the best we will fairly 
tax for the good of the rest who must use less productive 
land ; this tax for land we will graduate to the productive- 
ness of land used, down to that grade upon which labor 
can no more than earn a competence. There are con- 
veniences and blessings we will provide for all out of this 
fund. In this way we will equalize opportunities ; in this 
way we will provide for government expense proportion- 
ing its weight to the ability of those composing it. 



LAND AND TAXATION 97 

To tax land, making land use to pay government ex- 
pense, not in part, but entirely, would be to put taxation 
on a reasonable and equitable basis. It would tax men 
for what they withhold from other men instead of taxing 
them for what they add to other men's pleasure and profit. 
The land used in productive processes may profitably 
to society and without injury to the user be taxed, for 
while he holds it others who would produce as much or 
more are shut out from it. Land should never be made 
to bear the expenses of individuals who do not use that 
portion from which they receive revenue. In so abusing 
land rights the revenue that goes to individuals deprives 
producers of the amount they must thus hand over to 
landholders. The justice of taking government revenues 
from the users of land is readily to be seen: It is one 
thing we must all have ; therefore all would be contribu- 
tors to government expenses, and that, too, when properly 
adjusted, in exact proportion to the land values held. It 
is the one limited element to life supplied by nature, there- 
fore an equal right to its use would not be discrimination 
for or against any man or class. A well regulated tax 
on its possession would not be robbery of any, for they 
who pay the highest tax would occupy the most produc- 
tive land. This may be illustrated by a supposititious 
division of land values. Considering the values to be 
divided into one billion equal shares the man who exer- 
cises control over land valued at one share would pay 
one-billionth part of government revenues. This would 
represent the value he holds, the value of the opportunity 
he has closed to exercise by any other. Whether this 
value is in the form of a few square feet of city land on 
which he does repairing of broken toys or a many-acred 
farm far from the region where the concentrated demand 
for land multiplies its productive qualities he would pay 
one share. Juster tax rates cannot be devised and a fairer 
7 



98 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

basis than land values is not to be found. All others, 
aside from inequalities that are unavoidable, must be ob- 
jected to because of uncertainties and deceptions attending 
their valuations by owners and tax-determining officials. 
Land, being indispensable to human life, should be held 
in trust by government for the use of the people. Land 
belongs to the living; the dead have no rights in land, 
to dispose of it, to govern its control. The child born 
to-day cannot in any justice be governed in his use of 
land by the individual and collective rights of the genera- 
tion that ceases at his birth. His right is undeniable and 
present, based upon his needs ; their right has ceased for 
they no longer need it. The laws they agreed upon for 
their own control this child may alter as he finds them 
too cramped, not suited to the changed social order his 
birth introduces, the changed conception of justice his 
wisdom brings to men. Their rights of control, in all 
things pertaining to his life, are not. The regulations 
governing their actions in the body came to an end when 
they quitted the body and do not descend to their suc- 
cessors. The child born to-day must have the land they 
no longer use ; be must have it to live on and by its fruits 
in manifold productions and uses or cease to live at the 
very entrance to life because land is lacking for bis 
use, is denied him. He must regulate its use as the 
changed social and industrial conditions make imperative 
a more socialized ownership. In times past land control 
by the word and will of dead and past users of land 
worked but little hardship in the industrial life of Ameri- 
cans. Land was plentiful and opportunities abundant, 
unused and undeveloped. This plenty and abundance 
has through land claiming ceased and with its cessation 
passes the interest of former generations in the land 
rights of the living ; ceases the shadow of right to private 



LAND AND TAXATION 99 

land control by the living for land control will finally 
result in man control. 

That our land system is an inheritance developed by 
selfishness makes change appear a long work of education 
and warfare against the concentrated strength of classism. 
That all rights, save those of property rights in essence, 
have come to be regarded as universal, points the direc- 
tion of thought along this line. It is possible the de- 
fenders of our present land system have not reflected that 
men must live in this world ; that it is the one principal 
thing for them to do, and for those who succeed them. 
That they have no choice but to live; in short, that the 
one reason they are cast into this world is that they stay 
in it a little while to bless or to curse it. Too often, sadly 
enough for the world and the principles governing men's 
acts to men, it is only a very little while they stay. Yet 
for them, what infinitudes of misery, what eternities of 
suffering they are made to undergo in that little while. 
How much this misery and suffering by union against 
life contribute to the littleness of time they spend here, 
let God reckon, for man in his greeds cares not. 

What land is held beyond the needs and uses of its 
claimants is held back from the service of their kind. 
Land held for rents and speculative purposes deprives 
some of the right to earn livings by making it impossible 
for them to do so. To work and enjoy the fruits of labor 
unhampered is a natural and imprescriptible right. Land 
subject to private rent regulations reduces the worker's 
wages in the amount to which claimant's demands exceed 
the rent that would be demanded under an order whereby 
all land would be made to yield a proportionate share of 
government expenses, taxation of land to be regulated 
by the value thereof. Taxes on land values solely would 
free workers from the double burden now imposed, by 
Loft* 



100 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

which the landholder and society tax him, not only for 
the use of land, but for the conveniences and aids to pro- 
duction which labor places on land. These additions to 
the burdens of labor subtract from the profitableness of 
all efforts put forth. 

Land held back from use for speculative purposes de- 
prives labor of wealth in the amount that labor is deprived 
of occupation through dearth of available land. Wealth 
is not created without land, and if land is fenced off from 
use the wealth it would yield by application of labor to its 
resources is not brought forth. This holding of land also 
decreases the share of wealth labor controls in the amount 
the higher rents for land used is an increase beyond what 
would be demanded if the unused land should be thrown 
open to access of those who need it. In a tract of land 
composing a million acres if five hundred thousand acres 
are fenced off from use, the people of that tract must ac- 
commodate themselves to the other half. It also, as has 
been said before, gives power over the lives of those who 
have no recognized claim to land, for land power must 
be conceded as but another term for life power. 

Power to control labor without being in any degree 
legally responsible for the life and well being of those 
who supply labor, is to the users of labor the cheapest 
possible form of human slavery. The apologist and eman- 
cipatist (by word of proclamation and constitutional 
amendment) always become greatly and indignantly ex- 
ercised over the use of this word. They point you to that 
remarkable, truth expressive New Year's message of a 
hero ; they convincingly flaunt before your eyes that neat 
bit of sarcasm entitled the thirteenth amendment and their 
case is complete. So be it. But the letter killeth ever if 
the spirit be absent. It matters little in form and nothing 
in fact to the oppressed toiler whether he receives cloth- 
ing, food, and a hut in which to crawl for shelter, all pro- 



LAND AND TAXATION 101 

vided by his master recognized in law, or receives the 
equivalent of these doled out as wages; wages from an 
employer who feels he has a claim to the eternal gratitude 
of workers for giving them employment, and who would 
find the cruder forms of slavery too clumsy and expensive 
for his fullest action and profit. He has the power to 
compel labor for such wages as he gives, for the resources 
have been locked and labor has no choice. This power 
he holds and exercises through privileges granted and 
perpetuated by the laws of the land, privileges which ren- 
der forced servitude as virtual and absolute as though 
property in human bodies had not been abolished — by 
word of proclamation and constitutional amendment. 

All consumers must pay tribute to the class to whom 
have been delegated use and control of wealth resources. 
In this lies the strength of the class. It is the most com- 
plete favoritism for the favored, the most effective bond- 
age to those great numbers most directly discriminated 
against. There is no argument in support of the superior 
right of a class to the sources of prosperity. The control 
has been handed over in the nature of a gift, virtually, 
that they may feed fat upon the needs of their kind. The 
power is absolute; we have reserved no degree of au- 
thority in the case as it now stands. If they choose to pay 
their workers such wages as men respecting their rights 
and lives cannot afford to work for and labor declares 
a strike, the consuming world must suffer for it. If they 
unite and advance the price of their commodities the 
public must pay the price or dispense with the goods. This 
is worse than a tax on industry ; it is industrial tyranny. 

There are powers of redress for these wrongs to the 
people if the people will exercise them. If the public 
sense of fairness has not yet risen to the justification of 
seizure in the control of natural resources, there is a state 
nearer justice than the present, to be arrived at by less 



102 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

determinate action. The control of such industries on a 
plan of public profit-sharing, which would include fair 
wages to workers and fair prices to consumers to be en- 
forced by a forfeiture of control for failure, would be a 
long advance beyond our prevailing system which makes 
robbery of the people beyond their defense. Such an 
improved system would be a mere subterfuge, but one 
greatly preferable to the present system. It would be less 
satisfactory than direct public control for many reasons, 
the principle of which, aside from the spirit of justice to 
be considered, is the probable inability to command hon- 
esty in operations so restricted and governed. The legal 
mockery we call anti-trust laws proves the inefficiency of 
government, so far, to restrict robberies committed in 
the guise of business energy. 

There is no one thing in the world of society a panacea 
for all its ills. But there are fountain-heads from which 
many ills or blessings may flow and establish a distribu- 
tion of bad or good according as the source may be. Our 
land system is the parent of many evil conditions, many 
oppressions in industrial circles, the foster parent and 
guardian of many more. The evils that are not the imme- 
diate result of land monopolization have that giant iniquity 
for their great exemplar and ready defense. The monopo- 
listic cause assembles to the support of a single feature 
the entire monopolistic force. These have realized that 
union generates strength. Herein is wisdom. The many- 
schooled reformers of industrial abuses quibble over hair- 
splittings in the theory and theories for correction, and 
monopoly feeds on. 

The profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is 
served by the field. Truer statement than this was never 
made; grander summing of truths to support land 



LAND AND TAXATION 103 

nationalization cannot be made. The king, the beggar, 
all, must live by land. 

American legislators and officials have given to corpora- 
tions millions of acres of the public land, the profit of 
which should be to all; this they have done without 
reserving to the public any of the profits to accrue from 
such donations. They have worked hitherto as a par- 
tially disguised curse, hiding under the cloak of improved 
commercial and industrial facilities the dagger of mo- 
nopolization so deadly in its thrusts at the common inter- 
ests. The evils inherent to a system like ours increase 
daily in disregard of common rights. These rights are 
ignored, the appeals and demands of the people are un- 
heeded, their needs passed over with contemptuous 
scorn. 

We are a tax-paying people; a tax-admiring people; 
a tax-worshiping people. It might almost be said we are 
happy only when paying taxes or seeking some pretext 
for levying a new tax (a tax on the poor man), so much 
so that with some a man's patriotism is gauged by his 
avidity to be taxed — for needful or wasteful and dis- 
criminating purposes, it matters little. The man who 
objects to a tax, even if it be discriminating and needless, 
is classed by the defenders of all taxes (on other men) 
as an enemy to our institutions and a traitor seeking to 
play this country over to some foreign power. 

So much at least appears. Those who fundamentally 
promote tax gathering are in some way benefited thereby, 
or hope by endorsement of some other scheme to receive 
a more ready support to their own plan. Monopoly in- 
dustries band together to place the burden on those who 
cannot combine, save at the polls, to resist the injustice 
done them. It is the honor that obtains among thieves. 
One monopoly chief sees a particularly inviting field and 
seeks alliance with another chief who has cast covetous 



104 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

eyes on some other tempting opportunity and a coalition 
is effected resulting in the attainment by each of his desire. 
This multiplies taxes direct and indirect. There are many 
who by no possibility of circumstances can be benefited 
by these discriminative taxes who nevertheless demand 
them. Herein is to be discerned a power in politics. To 
their misconception of public duties and rights there is 
salvation in a tax. Times grow good and they ask a tax 
to keep them good. Times grow hard and they ask a tax 
to relieve the pressure of stagnation. A tax is their 
poison or antidote as the case may require. Not taxes 
for government is their faith, but taxes. The proof that 
an animal body is full of blood is not the strength and 
activity of the animal, but the severance of blood vessels 
from which if abundance pour forth it may be argued 
that the animal has blood. 

Public money devoted to the benefit of society in the 
way of public works is the wisdom of taxation. From 
such expenditures society reaps many fold in the blessings 
of education and the betterment in all social ways, of those 
who come under the influence of these. Of the money 
devoted to such uses very little is lost to the people. While 
occasional frauds may creep in, the rule is honesty in the 
disbursements of funds set apart in this way. The job 
grows more in evidence here also, but the extravagances 
and misapplications that so occur are the smallest fraction 
in significance to the burden of taxation for private inter- 
ests which the public continuously carries. The money 
diverted from the use of labor in the operation of class- 
favoring laws is the prime iniquity in our tax scheme. A 
small part of this money if devoted to the creation of 
public benefits would make us a nation rich in libraries, 
schools, parks, good roads, — in all useful and refining 
arts. These can be had without pinching the allowance 
of daily food of one human being, but not by the known 



LAND AND TAXATION 105 

way. In these benefits all would share and be the better 
for them. No one, of the hosts now paying tribute to the 
private powers of taxation can be benefited by the taxes 
they so pay. No one so taxed can be affected but to 
injury. Lessening the tribute users now pay to holders of 
resources would leave more wealth with the actual pro- 
ducers. Diverting that lessened volume of tribute from 
personal to public uses would still further, and rightly, 
benefit actual producers. They who create wealth are 
worthy to enjoy and control it. 

As if the whole human world were leagued against him 
to plunder and harass, and not under the highest possible 
obligations to him, the man who works is made the point 
of assault in all that pertains to his comfort, and very 
life. It matters not that these advances are made indi- 
rectly, yes, unconsciously, without recognition as to source 
by those against whom they are directed. It is even a 
graver matter that unconsciousness on the part of many 
must be urged as a defense for their appearance. A nation 
careless of justice and unconscious of insidious approaches 
upon the rights of the people has fallen indifferent of a 
most vital cause for watchfulness. If all knew the full 
import of these advances, if the advances were recognized 
and carefully measured, honest men would know how to 
act. The progress of encroachments may be measured 
by comparison of workers' condition in the present with 
the condition of the moneyed class. Let it be kept in mind 
that labor alone produces. Then go back in the history 
of our national life a period of fifty years. Extremes then 
were not common nor glaring. Go back a hundred 
years and with the exception of privileges gained from 
monarchical forms, or in a few cases where wealth repre- 
sentatives as money, jewelry, and the like, were brought 
from Europe, there was no wealth class distinct from the 



106 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

work class. There were fanciful distinctions such as are 
claimed by family superiority, but material conditions 
varied not greatly only in exceptional cases. Now let the 
apologist account for the differences that appear to-day. 
Let him in his account keep strict hold of the fact that 
wealth as the word applies to goods used by man has 
never been created by any power but that of labor. He 
will tell you in his accounting for wealth possessions like 
those of Croesus that k is due to the superior business 
sagacity of individuals. His summing will practically be : 
Since Gould sold mouse traps as a boy, therefore sell 
mouse traps, you boys by the millions in this land, that 
you may every one of you become millionaires. He will 
not take into explicit account the steps of monopolization 
and legislative specialization by which Gould made mil- 
lions in railroad ventures. Not at all ; his recipe for the 
multiplication of the Gould type is mouse-trap peddling, 
just as he has said Grant tanned hides and became a great 
general, leading many thousands of soldiers, therefore 
tan hides, you millions of American boys, and lead thou- 
sands of soldiers ; as he has said Lincoln split logs and be- 
came President, freeing the negroes, therefore split logs, 
you millions of boys in our land, so you may become 
President and free the negroes. 

Because we have not permitted the producers of wealth 
to control wealth we have developed a wealth class. 
Those who were granted privileges by monarchs held 
them or handed them down to their heirs, who held them 
or sold them to others so that the privilege as a personal 
matter continued. These privilege holders secured other 
privileges ; other persons came in and secured other privi- 
leges through numerous devices. To-day we have land 
monopolization, railroad corporations, chartered com- 
panies for various purposes and a list of trusts which it 
would be wearisome to recite. And still the advice is, 



LAND AND TAXATION 107 

sell mouse traps you boys that have an ambition to be mil- 
lionaires; if you are without ambition to be such do not 
sell them. Go to school now and when you are a man 
you may be fortunate enough to get a position on a rail- 
road owned by the mouse-trap peddler; then you will 
draw the wages of a section hand, all your talents are 
worth, — from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a 
day. 

The skill and progress of the race are wrested from 
their rightful courses to be made aids to the bondage of 
workers. Our method of discrimination places wage 
laborers, small businesses and the agricultural class under 
tribute to monopoly and capital. Monopoly and capital 
are exempt from any weight of taxation, as they dictate 
the tax system whereby revenue for government uses 
shall be created. By indirect taxation in various forms, 
by discriminative financial laws, by monopolization is 
oppressed the hireling in his wages and all the less favored 
of whom it may be said that by the sweat of their brows 
do they earn bread. 

Indirect taxation by way of tariffs is expensive to the 
people who must use the goods taxed. In protective 
features they are discriminative or they would not be 
asked for by those protected, but for this they would de- 
feat the very ends for which they strive. They are bene- 
ficial to a class, or that class would not clamor for them. 
That one industrial class alone demands a special tax is 
sufficient to warrant rejection for one that does not ex- 
empt this class will not be asked. Taxations to promote 
the interests of a class or classes are detrimental to the 
masses in the degree to which the class is benefited. It 
cannot be otherwise. Of the actual wealth increase the 
percentage of the tax will represent the per cent, advan- 
tage of the favored class. A tax on exchange is unwise 
and all tariff taxes are such, even when they do not add 



108 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the outrageous protective feature. The most beneficial 
system is the one that restricts as little as possible the 
even distribution of wealth. This ultimately promotes 
the equal interests of all classes and works to the estab- 
lishment of a prosperous national commonwealth. But 
special tax beneficiaries do not look to ultimates. Their 
thought is for and of the present. All indirect taxes are 
dangerous, being subject to unlawful manipulations from 
influences wishing to shift burdens to other forms of in- 
dustry. They are rendered more easily discriminative 
than a direct tax, for they are subject to befoggings and 
jugglings by those who prosper by them and by those 
who make merchandise of matters political. 

Under our prevailing form, that of taxing labor pro- 
ducts, taxing wealth, an income tax is the most logical 
of taxes. If we are to levy taxes on production the man 
who possesses wealth forms and securities representing 
a million dollars is the fittest subject of taxation in the 
land aside from the man who owns more than one mil- 
lion. So far as the matter of constitutionality may in ab- 
solute truth stand between the present taxpayer and this 
avenue of relief it is difficult to see, — by all but the men 
who own the wealth and the courts who will not let them 
be so taxed. How a difference warranting the setting 
aside of the more reasonable tax should appear between 
the legality of a form that calls on one man to pay a dol- 
lar into the treasury on an article that costs him five 
dollars, and another man to pay in addition to this tax 
a direct sum as his ability may empower him, is not plain. 
While we tax wealth possessions, taxes in proportion to 
ability should govern. Is not the one dollar a tax on the 
poor man's income? He may have an income of three 
hundred dollars a year, received from his employer for 
work done. This three hundred dollars is more than his 
income, it is his living, his only support. Out of his in- 



LAND AND TAXATION 109 

come and his living, his support, he pays taxes on goods 
he or his family must have. He pays as much on the same 
article as a millionaire pays. The constitutionality of such 
taxes is less evident to the class of the three hundred 
dollar income than is a tax on incomes amounting to 
three thousand, to four thousand and over. 

It is not wise to tax accumulations for taxes discourage 
the use of the thing taxed. Houses, carriages, books, 
pictures, are all valuable in the lives of men beyond the 
wealth they are or represent. Therefore, in essence, an 
income tax is not wise because it limits the ability to com- 
mand desirable goods. It is of the same nature that taxes 
the three hundred class on the imported article. It is not 
just to those who would come under its provisions, but 
is nearest justice to taxpayers as a whole while wealth is 
taxed. It is the fairest method of taxing wealth, for pro- 
portionate sharing is fairer to all classes than is a tax 
on the necessities of labor. The wealth of the class who 
would come under a proper income regulation stands for 
the inequalities of distribution. That controlled by the 
largest holders represents one man's injustice to many, 
or, better, society's injustice to man. The means by which 
the wealth is amassed represents great injustice to the 
race. Where the means is natural it should be taxed; 
where man-created it should be abolished. Under the 
first comes land grasping; under the second legislative 
favoritism and industries whose natures change by the 
congregation of humanity from competitive to monopo- 
listic ; those of the last nature should not be abolished but 
seized by society and appropriated to the common good. 

It may be objected that since taxing wealth is known 
to discourage its accumulation, taxing wealth resources 
would discourage the use of these resources. The foolish- 
ness of such an objection to the land tax scarcely needs 
pointing out. If a certain resource be taxed one dollar 



110 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

while yielding three, the man who develops it will receive 
two dollar wages. If he finds he can double his labor 
will the prospect of doubling his tax deter him from 
doubling the resources he uses ? While he' doubles his 
labor and his tax he will double his wages, so that as he 
once paid one dollar and kept two he now pays two dol- 
lars and keeps four. Such taxation is not discouraging, 
for the thing taxed is by its proper development the source 
of wealth to the user. To-day labor pays to the land 
powers as great a tax and bears the all but complete bur- 
den of government aside from this. Under the land tax 
if a man doubled his resources he must double his produc- 
tion or lose in the transaction. If he doubled his resources 
his tax would be two ; if he did not double his production 
his yield would be three, which would leave him one as 
wages. This result would cause him to leave one-half 
of his resources unclaimed that another man might use, 
for the smallest possible claim upon which he could exer- 
cise his productive powers in the fullest would yield him 
the highest wages and he would hot put wages into land 
which would be a source of expense and not profit to him. 
The increasing value of his possession would tend to in- 
crease the taxes on it, but not in the full proportion of 
productiveness, for the needs of government would not 
increase in this proportion, and as it is not the business 
of governments to keep subjects stripped of all but a bare 
living, the demand in taxes would grow to meet the de- 
mands for public works, keeping up to the limit that 
would discourage landholding in degrees that result in 
effect to monopolization. When he doubles his control 
of resources he shuts out some other man who would use 
the half and pay the tax. Therefore a double tax is a 
just condition to his doubled possession. 

We have adopted the unwisdom of taxation and ex- 
ercise the unwisest feature in this unwisdom. To heap 



LAND AND TAXATION HI 

up taxes on labor until burdens crush, to refuse steadily 
all schemes that promise an equalization as much as is 
possible while adhering to our wedded unwisdom marks 
the dictation of plutocracy. Land rates and service rates 
by private holders of franchises are the two most powerful 
weights on producers. There is relief, even cleaving to 
our unwisdom. Taxation of franchises is one part. They 
represent advantages that make them peculiarly fitted for 
taxation until such a time as we shall have repudiated 
all unwisdom and seize the control they now exercise. 
Inheritance taxes are another way of part relief to direct 
production, — a way in taxing far juster than our practiced 
one. Wealth forms and representatives passed from 
generation to generation may, with all fairness to those 
who cease, to use them and to those who had no part in 
their production, be made a source of revenue to the 
government. Such do not usually represent thrift and 
industry and no more. They represent, in important cases, 
opportunities and the injury of society. Estates of a given 
value should be taxed as well as incomes of stated amounts 
until such a time as we may go to a better taxing system. 

Diversified objects of taxation are subject to misappli- 
cations and abuses. They also by their multiplicity in- 
crease the expenses of the taxing machinery. The tax on 
the people now to satisfy the expenses of the system is not 
a most despicable sum. Any unnecessary expense in 
government is a large expense. One small force of tax 
appraising and collecting officials could run this depart- 
ment if the basis of taxation was equitable and un- 
wavering. 

When we weigh the importance of the tools against the 
necessities of the man many suggestions of change crowd 
for consideration and the substitution of right for wrong 
becomes inevitable. The tools are abundant and the best 



112 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

God ever placed before man. We have divided them as 
may be seen. 

No man can by nutritive processes replace the blood 
a single vampire can draw from him in an uninterrupted 
drain. How much less can he fortify himself in this way 
against a whole brood. Yet we expect as much and cry 
Spendthrift, Improvident, because our expectations of a 
prosperous commonalty are not realized, and Ingrate, 
when the victim writhes in his efforts to free himself ; if 
he dares hope with audible expression for something 
better we reach the acme of reproaches and say Dreamer. 

Manufactured goods, foods, all products of industry, 
have a tendency to decrease in price with the growth in 
population. This decrease is unavoidable if the money 
volume does not increase. Goods measured against 
goods, prices will not vary under normal conditions. 
Many hands make more goods, and as each pair of hands 
produce more than the owner consumes the surplus goes 
into the markets and there competes with the products 
of other hands. Workers forced from the most productive 
fields by high rents and speculations do not produce and 
the industrial balance is disturbed; money is withdrawn 
and some industries produce a seeming excess and we 
grow to have what has been named an over-production. 
Illustrating by any two industries as types of the entire 
industrial mechanism, so : One hundred men are engaged 
in wheat growing, another hundred in shoe manufactur- 
ing. The farmers and factory hands consume each others' 
goods by a series of exchanges. That is, the farmers sell 
wheat and with the money thus obtained buy themselves 
and families shoes. The factory men by wages obtained 
for work buy flour for themselves and families. This is 
the exchange process in natural business seasons. But 
the shoe manufacturer enters a combination which agrees 



LAND. AND TAXATION 113 

to limit the shoe output. Times are dull or a trust is 
formed by shoe men. To effect this end he agrees to sus- 
pend work for a certain season. This throws his workers 
into idleness when wages are not paid. They cannot get 
employment in other shoe factories, for each manufacturer 
has his full force. They cannot set up a manufactory, 
for their wages have just secured them a living. Other 
industries are crowded so they cannot find work outside 
their chosen trade. The one hundred farmers by reason 
of the decreased ability of the one hundred shoe hands 
will find the price of wheat declining. The shoe men will 
live, but some by charity, some by the proceeds of catch 
work. Charity does not set a full table and occasional 
work in the interval between engagements provides as 
little. The price of wheat must fall under such circum- 
stances. The farmers who take their wheat from the 
market of the shoe hands and seek to enter it in other 
markets find similar conditions prevailing there. 

The humane wisdom of the race has ever engaged the 
question and sought to, by one method or another, secure 
to the laborer his hire. All the causes that go to decrease 
product values increase land values. Products increase 
in volume on increase of population and the increase by 
reason of unfair distribution decreases values. Land area 
does not increase, but its availability is influenced by the 
system of control practiced. Decrease in availability or 
increase in demand increases its value. Being essential 
to life and progress the question of land use is the one that 
in solution determines the condition of the people. 

The availability of land alone concerns labor. More 
than one-half the richest land of earth is uncultivated and 
people are dying everywhere for food that the speculator 
may grow rich and because development must wait on 
the pleasure of holders, and in some parts because devel- 
opment cannot precede capital. In the waiting that must 
8 



114 THE LABORER AND. HIS HIRE 

ensue before unappropriated lands are rendered available 
by the spread of civilization the land speculator will have 
an abundant time in which to secure that also and annex 
it to his claims that are now waiting for the overflow, the 
shifting seat of population. While development of new 
regions is waiting on the action of private capital, the 
land speculator precedes settlement and his claim fore- 
stalls that of the user. His harvest he is already pre- 
paring, to abundantly ripen when the time falls due. He 
reaps from man's necessities. 

While judgment for our mistakes goes before us, it also 
is present with us. To-day and to-morrow the works of 
private land control are the same, but the intensity of its 
evils grows. If the landholder chooses to reserve land 
from use and to be at no expense to improve it for the 
benefit of society, our laws grant him the power to do so 
at a very little cost, at no cost in places. The same 
authority makes it possible for him to collect robber prices 
for its use when increase in population and needs press 
so upon the limitations of land that his demandis must 
be met. Our laws encourage the landholder to keep back 
this possession until the pressure becomes so strong that 
he can compel large rents, permits him to increase rents 
with the increasing needs of the race. This we do by 
lightly taxing unimproved lands and making the permis- 
sion of holders the sole condition of occupancy. 

Land held in unimproved condition, unoccupied when 
the need for land is great is an injury to society, and our 
laws are radically wrong in making taxes on it so light 
that holders are encouraged to withhold it, looking to a 
rise in rents that will enable them with greater profit to 
open it to use. Our system unjustly combines land values 
and improvement values and the man who pays rent to 
private holders must bear both burdens. The more ex- 
pense that is put upon land in reasonable amount the more 






LAND AND TAXATION 115 

it is fitted for use, and in all cases where the nature of the 
improvement does not affect the commercial, the pro- 
ductive value of the land, the user of the land should not 
be assessed for the evidences of his thrift. Thus we tax, 
first the land, a necessity to life, then the improved state 
of land, the separable improvements, representing wealth, 
human effort, usefulness, desirability, in the degree to 
which the improvements beautify earth and bless society. 
If this land is rented, society, in the person of the renter 
in increased rents satisfies the additional assessments upon 
the title-holder. Aside from these features of rent, the 
title-holder taxes the renter on values not so created, but 
which the renter, his family and all other families create. 
This increased tax because of increased social values does 
not go to the creators, but to the title-holder. In a system 
of private land ownership the unused portions should 
be highly taxed against the holder to the end that specula- 
tion and trading on the needs of society might be 
destroyed. 

A better view of injustice practiced in taxing land im- 
provements, that is, separable improvements, may be ob- 
tained by a consideration of degrees in improvement. If 
two men own adjoining lots in the heart of a city, great 
inequalities may appear in the demands society makes 
upon them. As long as the lots are kept vacant, desira- 
bility being equal, the expense of holding the two lots is 
the same to each man. Then, if the owners decide to build 
their tax rate parts company, unless they erect improve- 
ments valued alike. One puts up a building that will be 
devoted to increasing the sum of those products that are 
helpful and civilizing in their effects upon the people. A 
hundred men find employment, homes are thereby made 
more prosperous, trade increased, money circulated. The 
usefulness and beauty of the place are immeasurably ad- 
vanced by the building that costs many thousand dollars, 



116 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

representing labor, wealth and the ingenuity of hundreds 
of people. The improvements on the original state of the 
land are good in all the diverse talents represented. For 
the magnified usefulness, its contribution to the sum of 
human happiness, for the change that works blessings 
to society, the tax on the entire property is increased many 
times over what it was when the land lay idle and no one 
was benefited by its existence. This added tax discour- 
ages land use to the degree it encroaches upon profits. It 
gives rise to speculative ambitions impossible of existence 
should a tax great enough to discourage its holding be 
laid upon idle land held by private claimants. 

Then on the adjoining lot the owner determines to build. 
His building may cost as many hundred as his neigh- 
bor's cost thousand dollars; here he conducts a business 
hurtful to society, a structure unsightly to man and God. 
Before the eyes of all he flaunts his unholy wares, sap- 
ping the energy and brain of youth, crushing the strength 
of manhood, preying upon virtue. Or he may build a 
cheaply constructed sky-scraping tenement where 
humanity congregates like rabbits in a hutch; from this 
he receives a percentage of profits much greater than his 
neighbor whose property is devoted to the satisfaction 
of the demands of intelligent and virtuous society. In 
the case of the dive the owner may pay, aside from a tax 
on his property, blood money to the municipality for the 
privilege of injuring all who come within the influence 
of his place. In all but such exceptional cases the two 
men find the expense of government for the conducting 
of business a most unfair division. Dollar for dollar of 
improvements they are taxed by a stubborn system that 
measures cubes and spheres by the same unyielding yard- 
stick. 

Looking at the items of taxation it is plain that the 
the burden falls to labor. In fact, statistics have been 



LAND AND TAXATION 117 

worked out to prove that the worker pays the taxes. Such 
demonstration is needless. In import taxes the necessities 
of workers run over one hundred per cent., the luxuries 
of wealth ten per cent, and less. In import taxes then it 
may be seen that the worker bears a disproportionate 
share. In real property commercial rent covers all gov- 
ernment demands against landholders. These two we 
make the principals in the taxation basis. Both are de- 
signed to prevent the rise of the worker. So we make 
this unavoidable expense to rest upon human effort, 
human ingenuity. The extremely wealthy avoid the taxes, 
the poor and middle classes coming in for their share, 
their more than share. It will always be so while produc- 
tion is taxed. 

Land, a staple, always in demand, with a value regu- 
lated by the calls for it, all must have. What more rea- 
sonable basis for taxation can be asked, what other source 
of revenue can be needed since land is the source of all 
wealth? The fairness of the proposition should not be 
swallowed up in any charge of impossibility. To a mind 
erased of impressions made by habit, taxing the source 
looks much more practicable than taxing the result, taxing 
the tools much more reasonable than taxing the products 
of the tools. Good or bad use of opportunities is the 
choice of the holder, but the holding deprives some other 
of the opportunity. There is no form of taxation so free 
from indirection and jugglery. A hundred thousand acres 
are not to be worn around the neck at a charity ball and 
put into a cabinet for secrecy when the assessor rings ; a 
metropolitan lot is not to be written on paper that calls for 
so much interest per year from the man who produces or 
builds him a home. The great tract and the lot stand for 
no injustice, hypocrisy. There they are, smiling, rejoicing 
in their locked-up possibilities, inviting any or all who 
need their treasures to come and satisfy their desires. If 



118 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

their possession as wealth possibilities becomes too expen- 
sive trinkets under the operation of a land tax, the holders, 
to save themselves would be compelled to open them up 
to the productive forces that are idly waiting on just that. 
If they use their land it will be more economical for 
them to pay rent to government for it than to pay taxes on 
land, machinery, buildings and all facilities for production 
that make the land additionally valuable to them. The 
value of the land to other men is measured by their needs 
for land. As their needs increase they will bid more for 
the use of land. This is the law of economic rent. It 
would also be the law governing rent devoted to govern- 
ment. 

A tax system making it unprofitable business to hold 
land from use, or that would make it impossible for indi- 
viduals to draw rent from others, and that would destroy 
and forever prevent monopolization can be arrived at by 
collecting the entire tax for government from land, gov- 
ernment appropriating the unearned increment of all 
lands. Land held but not used would be a detriment, a 
dead expense to the holder. The first effect of the new 
order would be to throw open to actual users much valua- 
ble land that is needed and now held back. The second 
effect, growing out of the first, would be to equalize con- 
ditions to the degree of individual worth. Two desirable 
results, the first of which is just, the second honest, and 
both conforming to the demands of right and reason. 

Taxing wealth forms inevitably results in oppressing 
wealth creators ; land ownership by private powers has 
helped in that process. Population increasing, the neces- 
sary taxes for governmental purposes grow, and with 
every added soul advance rent rates. The increase in 
numbers has operated to injure the worker along both 
lines of growth. The increase of taxes, the increase of 
rents, he must meet. If the increase of rent 



LAND AND TAXATION 119 

incident to increase of numbers should be made to 
cancel the increase in taxes for government uses there 
would be a clear saving to wealth creators in the fullness 
of the latter expense. The demand for land will increase 
with population increase under any tax scheme. We have 
preferred in the past to take the expenses for government 
from the worker while allowing the landholder to take 
more and more of his wealth as rent. The increased value 
of land caused by increased demands for it, growing with 
population, is naturally fitted to meet the increase of gov- 
ernment expenses. Population would spread in healthful 
expansion. Land now barren of revenue to government 
would yield its increase to collective man and individual 
man. He who used land would be taxed on the value of 
the land he occupied, not for the benefit of private holders, 
but for government, society, because of the opportunities 
of wealth production he would enjoy to the exclusion of all 
others. He would then be left free to make the best of 
his opportunities, unhampered by assessments on the re- 
sults of his efforts. 



CHAPTER V. 

MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES. 

All values are comparative and represent the demand of 
one commodity measured by others or by some medium 
that is used to act as a standard in exchange or estimates. 
The power of the standard cannot be fixed or absolute 
because the quantity of the medium so used will vary its 
power as a unit or a whole the same as will the quantity 
of commodities to be measured give them as a whole or a 
part great or less exchange value. In a community where 
half the people raise wheat and half make clothing one 
coat will at a season of fair wheat yield exchange for five 
bushels of wheat. When the yield falls off next year to 
one half, one coat will exchange for two and one-half 
bushels if there is no other bread product to be had 
cheaper than this. In a phenomenally good season the 
price of wheat will go below the normal and one coat will 
command six, eight, perhaps ten bushels. So it cannot be 
said that coats have a fixed exchange value. The utility 
of the coat is not affected by the demand power of pur- 
chasers, but its cost is, its value in exchange is. When 
harvests are opulent, the coat makers can demand more 
wheat for a coat than in normal or poor seasons, and be- 
cause the wheat producer must have a coat he will give 
more from his abundance. In poor seasons the coat mak- 
ers cannot demand so much because the wheat raisers can- 
not give so much. If the output of coats remains the 
same each year or increases in proportion to increase of 
wheat production the operation of trade between the two 
industries would not vary from what has been suggested. 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 121 

Now, if in place of a coat we change the figure of meas- 
urement to a dollar, we will have the exchange function 
of money. Then it will be seen that the value of money 
in exchange cannot be fixed as an unalterable measure 
unless in seasons of great production the volume be in- 
creased to correspond and in seasons of limited production 
the volume be contracted to correspond to the decrease. 
This, considering the diverse forms of production, the 
demand for money in different stages of production, can- 
not be done. With the varying demands for money in ex- 
change a dollar would remain a dollar just as in the alter- 
nating seasons of wheat yield a coat was still a coat. But 
as the power of the coat to command wheat fluctuated 
with the quantities of wheat produced in different seasons, 
so does the exchange value of the dollar vary with the 
rise or fall of volume in commodities and uses to which 
it is put. It cannot, therefore, have a fixed value. It 
may be expressed in so many grains gold, so many grains 
silver, it may be stamped on the two sides of a paper of 
determined size. If so, a dollar will always represent a 
certain amount of a certain metal, a certain number of 
square inches of paper, just as the coat of a given style 
represents a given number of square yards of cloth. As 
the value of the coat consuming so much cloth depends 
upon the yield of wheat so the dollar whether in metal or 
paper will vary in power by the amount of uses to which 
it is devoted. 

But, it is said, paper is not money. It is true paper is 
not money ; it is also true that neither gold nor silver bul- 
lion is money ; it is true that gold and silver in virgin dust 
are not money. They are commodities which in the mar- 
kets of the world have a certain exchange power. Paper 
is a commodity with like power in a less degree. Then the 
government hand is put to the three commodities. Of the 
gold a given number of grains are made into a flat, round 



122 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

piece, of the silver a prescribed number of grains are 
flattened and rounded, of the paper a strip is cut, so many 
inches long, so many inches wide. The three commodities 
have changed form but are commodities still. No one of 
them is money but the gold and silver will in the world's 
markets buy an equal amount of goods; the paper is 
nearly valueless in exchange. Then the government puts 
the seal of the dollar on the gold disc, on the silver disc, 
on the paper slip. Their value in exchange is now equal. 
All are now money in every sense in which the word is 
applicable. The money office is, then, the creation of gov- 
ernment. In the case of metals being used to express the 
money function the commodity itself has a varying ex- 
change power, and men say it is good money because the 
commodity is exchangeable. In the case of paper money 
the government fiat is expressed upon a paper slip and 
because the people are mistrustful of their own integrity 
these papers are sometimes made to carry a promise that 
makes them redeemable in metal. Metals are taken as 
redemption money, not because they exercise the money 
office above that exercised by paper, but because they are 
commodities that possess exchange power in a convenient 
form. Paper money issued upon the security of national 
wealth would be as stable as that issued upon gold and 
silver. A solvent government in which the people partici- 
pate would not find it necessary to secure its notes ; com- 
mon wealth, as land, goods that the government's promise 
would command as security if security be required, would 
give as staple a basis as gold and silver. More staple for 
money supplies could not then be manipulated. In busi- 
ness life along private paths a creditor accepts a debtor's 
note without security if that debtor possesses in attachable 
wealth the amount of the note. It would be so in govern- 
ment notes. Those who urge that unsecured promises are 
not money mean to say that they are notes issued upon no 






MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 123 

security but that of government stability and integrity, — 
which beware. The money office is expressed by such but 
exchangeable commodities as security are not promised; 
when the function of money in the way of government 
notes is denied we repudiate all money and go to a barter 
system. If government owned and held all lands there 
would exist a tangible wealth reserve upon which to issue 
money that would release gold and silver from the office 
of redemption. The assets of the government institution 
would then exceed the liabilities and money panics would 
be avoided. Issued so, money could not be controlled by 
private financiers. Issued so, the promise of government 
with the unlimited resources back of the maker, the gov- 
ernment note would be as good as the note of a railroad 
manager who has tangible wealth subject to seizure if the 
note is unredeemed when the holder makes that demand. 
If needed, gold and silver could still be used as the discre- 
tion of the people demanded them for money, but relieving 
them from the office of redemption. This would give 
abundant money basis and no plea for restricting the 
money volume on the grounds of insecurity could be made. 
All values are determined by associating in the mind 
different objects and the ratio of desirability establishes 
the relative value of those objects. A precious stone, a 
metal, has no native value, but each may be desired and 
if so will come to have an exchange value or power. Iron 
is valuable to the civilized man but is not to the savage 
who knows not its uses. So all articles possessing virtue 
or the elements of utility will come to have a commercial 
value as men learn to desire them. One so-called precious 
stone embracing the qualities of hardness, color and 
brightness would be as valuable as another embracing the 
same or like qualities but for certain sentiments that have 
placed in the estimate of trade a value or superior value 
to the sought for article. There is no value attaching but 



124 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

that created by demand, and as in the food market price 
is regulated by the supply available and the demand made 
on that supply, regardless of the agencies that may be back 
of and influence these price regulators. The aboriginal 
taste uncorrupted by civilized associations readily seeks 
an exchange that will dispossess the owner of metals and 
gems for gauds which in the catalogs of enlightened trade 
are next to worthless. The aborigine is happier for the 
exchange and is a man of more prominence in his neigh- 
borhood for the bargain he has consummated and his 
partner to the exchange grows rich by the gains accruing 
to him in civilized markets over the cost of the goods he 
traded for the trinkets of the savage. He is a man of 
greater prominence in his world because of the profits to 
him created by the demand for articles he secured by ex- 
changing so little wealth as his world esteems wealth. 
Standards of value vary in the two communities and each 
man finds himself at an advantage by the trade, governed 
as their interests are by the demands of their respective 
empires. 

Intrinsic value, or value that inheres in the thing said 
to possess it, is not in recognition subject to place or peo- 
ple. Intrinsic or inherent value can be said to attach to 
the forces of physical life supplies. There can be but two 
values, commercial and intrinsic. Commercial is that 
which by buying and selling enriches everyone through 
whose hand the article passes, which article if destroyed 
or consumed in exchange can be duplicated, if not in exact 
kind, in fair substitute. Intrinsic is that which has no 
substitute, no duplicate, and that which possesses intrinsic 
value is valuable to all people. Commercial values are 
local, intrinsic, universal. That which possesses commer- 
cial value depends for that value on the educated desires 
of consumers. That which possesses intrinsic value in 
itself sustains and produces; sustains life and produces 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 125 

the thing having commercial value. This does not make 
food forms of intrinsic value for what is food in one 
region is not in another. Reptiles and insects do not pos- 
sess a universal food value but in some localities they com- 
mand the price of food. But the ground upon which they 
crawl and which furnishes them sustenance has intrinsic 
value for the savage must have it for the hunting place of 
his food forms, the civilized man must have it for the cul- 
tivation of food forms. Food then is not of intrinsic 
value, being subject in form and diversity to the educated 
desires. The land from which food is to be had is of in- 
trinsic value because it is the base of all relative values. 
In a situation where only one form of food could be had, 
that food may be said to have intrinsic value because it 
is indispensable. Intrinsic values are those which lie 
within, extrinsic those without, or commercial, and the sit- 
uation which makes one form of food imperative places it 
among intrinsic values until a way is opened up for other 
forms. When food grows to have intrinsic value its ex- 
change value ceases for when possession of a food form is 
necessary to life men will not sell it. Land we have made 
to have a commercial value in addition to its intrinsic 
value but that does not argue the rightfulness of so doing. 
Men, and whole nations have placed commercial values, 
or, it is fairer to say, prices on the intrinsic virtues, for 
men have bought and sold political rights, nations have 
bought and sold freedom. Because this has been done 
we do not think of quoting votes in market reports or 
putting up bulletins to show fluctuations in the prices of 
foreign possessions when they become too strong to sub- 
mit to the powers that seek to exercise an exhausted power 
over them. Rights and freedom we do not place a price 
upon ; we would fain consider them above price. 

The savage who traded pearls for glass beads, gold and 
silver ore for tinseled braid, would not sell his land for 



126 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

either of these articles if heaped up mountain high when 
the trade should stipulate that he be turned adrift upon 
the ocean in a light canoe ; he would not trade if he must 
give up the beautiful upland and live in a morass. He 
would recognize the intrinsic value of his land and com- 
mercial values would not tempt him. The pearl's value 
and the metal's value is purely commercial. If this value 
was intrinsic he would not part with either lightly; he 
would place a higher commercial value on it if it repre- 
sented the most desirable to him. If their value is in- 
trinsic mankind would have always known their true 
worth ; it has been left to late generations to discover the 
so-called intrinsic value of these things. The commercial 
age sees with commercial eyes and because gold can buy a 
vote or a title to a brave people it is said to be of intrinsic 
value, to possess that value ! 

Demand weighed against supply fixes the commercial 
estimate of goods. Manufactured articles and natural 
forms are in exchange power valuable to their possessor 
to the extent the world prizes them. Desire for goods 
beyond desire for exchange destroys in possession the 
value of the article; while so held back it increases the 
commercial value of its kind in the markets of the world. 
Intrinsic values do not appreciate ; they do not depreciate. 
The values that inhere in a thing itself can never change ; 
if they could the thing would cease to be itself and become 
some other thing. Land and water are both essential to 
physical life, but a man given choice of ten acres water 
surface or ten acres land surface would take the latter if 
he must be confined to the one or the other. Water being 
a necessity to life has intrinsic value; land has intrinsic 
value for the same reason, and that value increased be- 
cause land embraces all other forms of physical neces- 
sities. To make the water equally valuable with land, 
the water would have to come into possession of land 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 127 

qualities, when it would cease to be water and become 
land. Water in a desert place may have commer- 
cial value, but that does not affect its intrinsic value. 
A pint of water bought for a hundred dollars has no 
more life-saving virtue than a pint dipped up in the 
heart of a verdant forest where the spring laughs up at 
the blue, rain-washed sky ; where the bird, the deer, and 
all the happy denizens of the wood drink with man and 
pay no price but that included in thanks for nature's 
gifts. If intrinsic value could change, the water bought 
and sold on the scorching desert sands should possess 
many times the virtues of that dipped from the spring. 
To therefore argue that the thing which is scarce pos- 
sesses values beyond one that is more plentiful when 
either can serve the same end is to confound quantity 
with virtue. 

In no community of earth is there sought the thing 
which is nowhere and by no one demanded. The dia- 
mond is as valueless to one who has no personal vanity 
to appease as is the bit of broken glass which rivals it in 
brilliancy and colors. Such a one does not value it as 
highly as he does a day's labor. If the value of the dia- 
mond be intrinsic, the day laborer and the contented 
philosopher would seek it as earnestly as the devotee 
of fashion, the collector, the royal crown which repre- 
sents more than the brow upon which it rests. To those 
who care not for it, it is as valueless as the brook pebble, 
yet a king's ransom has been paid for one the size of a 
girl's thimble. If there existed no demand for it there 
would be no price put upon it. Its clearness, hardness 
and sparkle would remain, but in the absence of demand 
there would be no price placed and paid for it. 

Gold would be valued no more highly than iron if the 
quantity was as great and the use the same. It would 
still possess the physical properties of gold. But its 



128 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

market value governed by the demand for and amount 
of available gold would place it on a commercial basis 
from the control of which all fictitious advantages would 
depart. Gold in the lives of men is less utile than iron 
and would command less in the markets but for certain 
sentiments in ornamentation and uses as an exchange 
medium that have created a commercial demand for it. 
Gold is precious in no sense but that of association and 
quantity ; it is possessed of value only as it is weighed 
against the desirability of other possessions. For itself 
no one prizes it but the miser ; none prize it but for the 
power its possession gives over other goods. Because 
of the many uses to which it is put it is much in demand. 
Being demanded greatly relative to its supply it has a 
high commercial value. Demands for it increasing and 
the quantity available for use remaining at an almost 
fixed volume, the price will constantly rise. The fact 
of its being so much sought as a means of art should 
exclude its use as a money basis. If the supply was 
adequate to the demand, increasing with increasing de- 
mand, this objection would be met. 

Any metal to which has been fixed, in effect, a legis- 
lated value in addition to the trade value, would increase 
in total value or become as much harder to command 
as the increased value plus the trade value. If a metal 
in trade is three in value, and legislation calls for its use 
in certain lines never before known, and the increased 
demand equals three in value, the total value will be six. 
If a metal is worth three and the demand be doubled, 
the quantity remaining the same, the price will increase. 
This is the way in which the amount of grains devoted 
to liquor production helps maintain prices of grains as 
food. Grain used as food helps to increase its price to 
the manufacturers of liquor. If production should re- 
main the same, the total devoted to either food or liquor 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 129 

use would cheapen it to a point where its commercial 
value would nearly cease. The total grain demand 
measured against the total product would fix the price 
of grain. In the same way gold is valuable in our coun- 
try and in the world. Aside from the purely commer- 
cial use of gold it is called upon to perform the almost 
entire money office. Money weighs against all other 
values. Money expressed in gold or based on gold must 
be limited in volume. Money being limited, the other 
side of exchange will have to be satisfied with less 
money, for money weighed against all other values must 
satisfy them. Prices will therefore fall under a destruc- 
tion of part of the money volume, and they will decline 
as long as the money volume declines actually or rela- 
tively. 

The enhanced demand for a metal used as an exchange 
medium will enhance its commercial value, and the price 
of other metals measured against it is lessened. In a 
phenomenal corn season if the wheat crop is very light 
the price of corn will be low, that of wheat high, meas- 
ured by money or in direct exchange of the two grains. 
The food virtues of corn are not lessened, those of wheat 
are not advanced; it is the relative supply of the two 
available for Consumption that varies the price from that 
ruling in ordinary seasons. If government found it 
advisable and possible to maintain a treasury reserve of 
seal skins from the Alaskan fisheries, if that reserve 
should be placed at one hundred million skins and we 
kept paying out seal skins to satisfy foreign obligations, 
the price of mink, beaver and other skins would, meas- 
ured by the seal standard, very much depreciate in com- 
mercial value. Their protective powers and beauty 
would not be affected, nor would those of seal be en- 
hanced. The only difference attaching to the former 
relations of seals to other furs is seen to be purely com- 
9 



130 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

mercial. Seal being so much demanded, the quantity of 
other skins that would be exchanged for a seal would 
double or treble. If government further issued bonds 
and permitted private parties to issue notes payable in 
seal skins these promises to redeem in seal skins would 
still further enhance their commercial value, because 
there would be more skins needed in reserve to enable 
the private parties to redeem their notes if presented. 
The seal skin would be "good" money for those who 
command it; it would buy many a day's work, many 
pairs of shoes ; many other skins that once stood in the 
relation of one seal to sixteen other skins, one seal to 
twenty other, would then stand one seal to forty, to 
sixty, and so on. The change is brought about not by 
any increase in the virtues of seal skins, but by the de- 
mand on the limited number to be obtained. If gov- 
ernment put a certain stamp to each skin, seal skins 
would be money as much as gold is now money. The 
possibilities of seal propagation would cause the destruc- 
tibility of the skins to be no bar to their use, would even 
be a plea for their use, a plea as rational as that of inde- 
structibility urged in favor of metals whose availability 
is limited. If banks should put out notes secured by the 
government on a seal skin reserve, we would have by this 
method money as "sound" as could be devised. The 
material upon which the money stamp would be placed 
would then as now be valuable in the markets ; its de- 
mand in the discharge of money work added to its 
demand as clothing, the present price of seal skins would 
advance by reason of the new demand. The new and 
continued demand would tend toward a constant 
increase of prices in seal skins if the fisheries were prop- 
erly regulated, and as all other skins would depreciate in 
relative price a most convincing argument could be 
constructed as to the soundness of seal skin money. 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 131 

Values in all material things are merely relative. If 
two toolless men on an island, the fresh water supply of 
which was underground, should find two two-quart flasks, 
one empty, the other full of pure water, each man being 
equally strong, each like determined, each need the same, 
they would divide the water so each flask held the same 
and each man would keep a flask. Either man would 
less part with a swallow of his portion than if he had a 
double quantity. The limitations in supply put a valua- 
tion on the water they had not thought of before and 
neither man would sell his last swallow of the precious 
fluid for the ransom of a prince if no relief from the 
dangerous situation was promised. Gold and jewels are 
not valuable to men in their situation; it is for water 
they would exchange all they have. If the water on one 
shore of the island was salt and on the other side fresh, 
the fresh water would not be guarded in use any more 
than would be the salt. In fact, so far as water accom- 
modations go, the two would be most happily situated. 
The fresh supply being devoted to drinking, cleansing 
and culinary purposes, from the other side of the island 
they would get their sea breezes, salt supplies, their bath- 
ing pleasures. Of a newcomer demand for remunera- 
tion for access to that part of the coast where salt waters 
lapped the sands would equal the demand made when 
desire for drink drove him to the shore where the thirst- 
slaking tide rippled up to meet the grass. The use 
being equal, the demand being equal, the price would 
be equal. One who could convert salt water into fresh, 
fresh water into salt, would be content on either side. 
To him no fictitious value would inhere in either flood. 
He would know to practical demonstration and benefit 
that all water possesses all elements to life so far as 
water is responsible. 



132 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Because of peculiar properties certain metals are used 
in manufacture, in work, in ornamentation. Because 
they are so used they have exchange value. They are 
valuable only in what we have credited as embracing 
value. So-called intrinsic value is a recognition of his- 
toric values in conjunction with present uses. Metals 
designated as precious and romantically invested with 
the misleading pretension of intrinsic values claim an 
importance in the life of the world far beyond their 
worth. They do not sustain life or make the possessor 
happier by mere fact of their possession. They make no 
people, no person, either great or good. In certain 
forms and by certain rules of custom they are eagerly 
demanded in exchange for food, clothing, all necessities 
and luxuries of life; toil and dangers are undergone to 
secure them, not for any native value they possess, but 
that their exchange will command all things that can be 
bought. Civilizing and developing countries find their 
most important use of certain metals as a medium of 
expressing money. 

Money in operation is a means of facilitating ex- 
change. Based upon a series of pretexts as to what 
constitutes money, it is a wonder of false conclusions 
originating from the false premise that money is a tan- 
gible entity when it is a work. Considered as a tangi- 
bility it is but bits of hard metal, stamped, or slips of 
paper inscribed with certain promises. By association 
the metal is invested with a fictitious value, its promises 
likewise, and the money superstition which confounds 
office with officer makes it the power that compels all 
other powers in the world of commerce. By the con- 
sent of the people, money, expressed upon either metals 
or paper, is a concrete representative of wealth. 

Money, however expressed, in national treasuries and 
bank vaults, is not wealth. It does not to any practical 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 133 

end represent wealth. It is idle and foolish miserliness, 
barren and mocking munificence on the part of a people 
maintaining a system of this nature. It is as valueless to 
the promotion of healthy enterprise, is as little indicative 
of universal prosperity as is the fictitious claim of 
national prosperity based on the extravagance of flashy 
millionairedom. It invites not the confidence of the 
people and respect of commercial nations, it is the 
political trickster and jobber that are invited, drawn to it 
as the needle to the magnet. The value of money in the 
national life is determined by the degree to which it, by 
free circulation, empowers workers to share in the bene- 
fits they introduce. 

To properly perform the work for which it is designed 
money must be sufficient in volume to move products 
freely, circulating readily to the extremes of commer- 
cial operations. This will keep alive exchange, for a full 
money supply cannot be readily drawn from the outer 
circles and manipulated by a financial center. A limited 
money volume insures a low wage rate, for limited quan- 
tity makes dear money, and the dearer any article is the 
more must be given in exchange for it, whether the thing 
exchanged be work or the product of work. Deficiency 
of money must ultimately house with the earners of 
wages ; they give work for money, and money being 
hard to get they must labor more for the same amount 
or get less for a certain period of work. 

Money in the hands of the people, in educational 
investments, in home improvements, in prosecution of 
enterprises, is practical wealth in capital form, and the 
good it secures blesses the nation. Money should not 
be rendered a device of governments for the benefit of 
the rich and the hurt of the workers. There is no office 
of government over which such absolute fairness to all 
classes should preside as in the issuing and control of 



134 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

money. Discriminations in control and favoritism gov- 
erning its circulation are fatal to any benefits the system 
may possess over mere barter, not only fatal to that, but 
introductive of many evils that can originate from no 
other source. While money is made the commercial 
blood of nations anything that hampers, restricts or con- 
gests its fullest, natural movement, demands the aboli- 
tion of that part of the system open to perversions and 
subject to such undesirable results. 

There is no greater wealth of nations, none so much to 
be desired as that wealth, the application of which to 
production, issues in larger, more useful lives, more en- 
lightened understanding by the people. Aggregate 
wealth is the least certain test of national wealth. It is 
the relative wealth of the individual in comparison with 
the total of the commonwealth that declares the eco- 
nomic situation just or unjust. Wealth, concentrated in 
the control of a class, is an item of poverty in the ac- 
counts of a nation. If our wealth must consist of rail- 
roads, machines, and like toys of man's inventive skill; 
of stocks and bonds in the possession of private corpo- 
rations, and there be lacking the evidences of wealth in 
the lives of the men who do the work and pay the bonds, 
we have but little wealth that makes an enduring state. 
Then, in comparison to the civilized worker, rent-pil- 
laged, mulcted by law-licensed extortion and browbeaten 
by power-holding wage payers, is the Lap a Solomon in 
the possession of a single reindeer, and the aborigine a 
Croesus in the possession of a boomerang, which brings 
down, as fate favors the opportunity, his four-footed or 
two-footed game. A nation is not wealthier than the 
average wealth of its members — average in actual condi- 
tion, not average as a result of mathematical calculation. 

While nations coin money as a medium of exchange 
and make it the item signifying commercial equations 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 135 

the volume of money must increase in proportion to 
population or they who sell for money will be disadvan- 
taged. In the markets where money buys all things, if 
money appreciates all things offered against money will 
depreciate. Cheap and dear are relative terms. If pro- 
ducts may be said to be cheap, money is relatively dear ; 
if products are dear, money is relatively cheap. Both 
money and products cannot be dear in a community at 
the same time. Both may be scarce, but the moment 
one is added to its relative power declines, the power of 
the other increases. So in any commercial state where 
the money volume is subject to the fact of contraction 
they who offer products and labor for money must either 
give more for the same money amount or receive less 
money for the same amount of products and labor. If 
the money volume does not increase in proportion to 
population, if demands increase beyond the increase in 
supply, the same results will follow as occur when actual 
reduction in volume is practiced where population and 
demands remain stationary. 

A full money supply is to the equalization, in a degree, 
of the comparative wealth of the classes. A scant supply 
can be manipulated more readily by those who make a 
study of oppression ; a full supply defeats this possibility. 
Because of its plenitude money is easily commanded; 
being abundant, workers will possess property advan- 
tages ; the full supply makes its possession general. For 
these reasons it will not be controlled by any class. It 
is as much to the financial advantage of creditor and 
fixed salary classes to decrease the money quantity as is 
the limitation of certain products advantageous to trusts 
manipulating the products ; it is as much to their 
strengthening in financial ways as is a famine in other 
cereal producing nations an advantage to our farmers, 
enabling them to sell grains at immense advantage over 



136 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

consumers. As for all propositions looking to compara- 
tive reductions in the money supply, it must be remem- 
bered as a law immutable that those who must earn 
money must, when money is scarce, devote more time 
and effort to securing the dollar than when money is 
plentiful. This fact, in justice to the workers, should 
never be dropped from the consideration in all financial 
policies. Plenty of money makes money easily obtaina- 
ble by all classes. Plenty of money makes plenty of 
products in the control of producers, for money com- 
mands products. It is true plentiful money will not 
command as much, unit for unit, as scarce money. Nei- 
ther will plentiful shoes, pair for pair, command as great 
a price as scarce shoes. A dollar will not command as 
much with a per capita circulation of twenty as at a per 
capita circulation of ten. At a circulation of ten it will 
not command as much as at one of five, or two, or one. 
For the reason that the larger circulation, is less power- 
ful in the unit strength, is it to be preferred. Scarce dol- 
lars become sacred, retiring from the haunts of common 
men, seeking retreats in the coffers of the rich. Plenti- 
ful dollars go out to the attenuations of productive enter- 
prise. Plentiful dollars are easily commanded, and 
dollars command all products. Money not only moves 
goods, but with nations relying on it, money produces 
goods. Money is paid out in wages, for machinery, 
for all operations of industry in the great body of people. 
Reaching out to the uttermost regions of exchange and 
employment it carries with it the goods of civilization. 
Withdrawing by contraction it deserts the outer circles, 
narrowing and ever narrowing in the limits of its free 
operations. They who are in the outer circle are re- 
stricted, pinched, reduced to the abasement of poverty. 
Money has deserted them, for those who gave them em- 
ployment, those with whom they deal, have felt the 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 137 

withdrawing movement and must give less for their ser- 
vices or the things they offer. Competition, with the 
zeal born of hunger, crowds out ; competition, with the 
fear of ruin, shuts out. Money flees to its centres, wages 
go down, prices go down, businesses go down. The 
structure built on money topples, falls, shatters, as money 
fluctuates and retires. 

Wages as dollars and cents or cents below the dollar 
line would cease to exist as wages if a system of reward 
making wages an approximate value of production 
should be introduced; equity would preside over all rela- 
tions of production and distribution, for in such a scheme 
is left no opening to the spirit of ruinous combination 
and wage oppression. If our present financial scheme is 
not suited to this order it can be amended by abolition 
and our people will be happier for its removal and the 
substitution of a measurement that classifies men for what 
they are and not for what they have become possessed 
of. Money as a measure of values does not only meas- 
ure visible commodities and effort — it measures the 
national worth. Production corresponds to the pro- 
ducer, and the producer, ultimately, to his pay. While 
we measure necessities, comforts, luxuries and education 
by money the moral tone of the people will be directly 
traceable to the wage rate in its universal bearing. The 
laborer can command no more of the beauties of living 
than his wages will measure for him and his life will 
reflect his surroundings. 

As a nation we occupy a plane our previous wage rate 
made possible for us, made unavoidable. The Chinaman 
occupies the plane his national wage rate has made pos- 
sible, unavoidable, for him. Our superiority in national 
character is due solely to the more just relations existing 
between Americans in industrial and political associa- 



138 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

tions, our ancestors having lived under juster orders than 
the ancestors of the present-day Chinaman. If the 
American wage earner suffers himself to be forced on 
the wage basis to the level of his Oriental competitor he 
must also occupy, in time, a like social and intellectual 
sphere. 

Restrictions in the money market, decrease in money 
supply, laws making possible money monopolization, 
attend the policy that makes nothing dear in commercial 
marts but money, nothing cheap but men and their work. 
The forces that work for an appreciating money standard 
tell us that faith is necessary to the success of a financial 
system. The claim condemns the claimants. Faith in a 
bit of shining metal is a precarious foundation for the 
success of a national policy. Faith in money issued 
upon the metal, faith in a private money source that has 
repeatedly betrayed the people is a faith that becomes 
babes. Ours is a faithless system in which none can 
have faith but those who despoil the people. The only 
foundation of faith that can be relied upon is faith in the 
powers issuing the money. The people have faith in 
one another, in the government, hence money issued 
on the integrity of the government has always been 
acceptable to the people. Money of this kind does not 
decline in power when balanced against products. It is 
only when balanced against metal, falsely considered 
money in itself, that we say it depreciates. Metal, 
traitor-like, deserts the people in time of greatest need, 
and because promises of the people when inscribed on 
paper must be increased to win it back we are asked to 
believe that metal is good money. No money system 
would be possible without the confidence of the people 
that they are able to perform all they promise. Money 
issued on gold collateral is no safer than money issued 
on shoe or corn collateral; it is only easier of manipu- 



MONEY SUPPLY AND WAGES 139 

lation by money speculators. The money stamp placed 
on gold is no better money than when placed on silver 
or nickel, but the scarcity of gold limits the money vol- 
ume when gold is accepted as a solitary standard, and 
limitation of volume is the root of the contention. In 
the contentions for single or double standard the war 
is not for or against any metal ; it is for scarce money or 
for plentiful money. If gold should increase in volume 
until it acceptably performed the work of money the 
silver question would settle itself. It is not against 
gold, but for *a volume of money adequate to the de- 
mands made upon it that a single standard policy is 
arraigned. It is not against silver that those who con- 
tend for "good" money speak. The essence of good 
money in their sense is found in scarce money, easily 
controlled money. As a marvelous increase in the 
world's gold output would silence the cry against the 
gold standard, a falling off in the silver yield to a point 
far below the gold yield would cause the single stand- 
ard advocates to transfer their allegiance from gold to 
silver. For would not gold, measured by silver, decline, 
and as their criterion of soundness in money is purely 
a question of appreciation all the arguments now made 
for gold could by the substitution of the word silver do 
duty for its advocacy as a sole money basis. Would 
not our imaginations be tortured by pictures of national 
dishonor bought by cheap money? Would not our 
ears be frighted with the direful cry of national col- 
lapse to follow inflation? Would not we recoil from 
an inundation of cheap foreign gold? The essence of 
the matter is the amount of money we shall maintain, 
not what its basis shall be. 

Money so dear that the people cannot command it 
is too high a monetary standard for a nation. A stub- 
bornly fixed volume, a diminishing volume, is fatal to 



140 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the end for which money is created. To be of equal bene- 
fit to all it must be of an ever-increasing supply to keep 
pace with the growing demands for it even as all other 
articles of demand must increase with demand, or the 
people suffer for the lack. With the goods measured 
by money there are, in almost every branch, substitutes. 
For money there is no substitute. Money has destroyed 
the barter system, and when money is scarce, when it 
retreats to its hiding place, business halts, remains 
inactive until money comes back. Increasing demands 
for money follow not more the increase in numbers 
than by growth of commercial diversities and expan- 
sions. Prices of commodities growing in volume with 
the growth of population cannot be maintained except 
by a corresponding increase in the currency volume. Of 
the total sum that men can devote to flour buying they 
will, under stress, decrease somewhat and put the money 
not devoted to flour to other uses. The minimum of 
money they can put to flour buying must measure the 
farmer's wheat; the money deficiency will therefore 
injure both classes, farmers and the consumers of wheat. 
With a vast majority of the latter class the money stress 
was announced in a reduction of wages, reduction in 
prices. With farmers it is called a price reduction. 
This form of action spreads throughout the commercial 
commonwealth and prices universal, in the measurement 
of a shrinking money volume, fall. Prices represent the 
prosperity of producers, and they rise or fall by the same 
causes and in unison with wages. Prices, then, must 
be maintained if we keep up our high standard of na- 
tional character, for prices are but wages in another 
use. Nations are such as the individuals of which 
they are composed, and nothing tells so much on 
national character as the manner of clothing, feeding, 
housing, educating of its units; all these items to life 



MONEY SUPPLY AFD WAGES 141 

must come within the limit of compensation in any field. 
Limited money supply limits all these. More than a 
quarter century in a policy which adheres to the depre- 
ciating movement inaugurated at its adoption con- 
vinces of its inefficiency — argues the viciousness of a 
plan which systematically and perseveringly increases 
the inequalities it attaches to the producing classes. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONSTITUTIONAL. 

The ideas of the fathers were as broad as the times 
permitted, their scheme as broad as the times sanc- 
tioned. The plans they formulated will be found broad 
enough for all time if their successors keep the spirit 
and perception of the early builders. This spirit has 
not been preserved and their perception of truth in gov- 
ernment has been dwarfed and distorted. Misconstruc- 
tions entered into and carried out by the enemies of 
free government work to the end that freedom may be 
displaced by shackles, democracy by plutocracy. Such 
at least is the indictment, in substance, brought against 
latter-day interpretations and tendencies. Those who 
believe in the truth of the charges do not hesitate to 
assail the constitution as the bulwark behind which the 
enemies of free government fortify themselves. It is 
certainly not beyond the support of conservative judg- 
ment to say that the weight of decisions in matters 
constitutional go to verify the charges when the actions 
of recent years are alone considered. This seeming ap- 
parent, the question that follows is as to the cause and 
responsibility for the wrongs, whether they result from 
the faults of the fundamental law or from the faulty con- 
struction of that law. Perhaps the liberality of the law 
is in part responsible for the abuses practiced in its 
name. Perhaps failure on the part of the people to exer- 
cise their annulling and prohibitive power forwards and 
augments the evils. Without this breadth, which has 
been abused, a free republic would not have been the 



CONSTITUTIONAL 143 

form of government following the memorable Act of 
July 4, 1776. 

The criticisms heaped upon our charter by those who 
perceive existing injustices should in strict fairness be 
confined to its distortions and misconstructions. The 
provisions made in the original never claimed finality. 
Under the given outline is the order of improvement 
and change as the needs occasioned by changing con- 
ditions may dictate. Our charter is our servant. The 
people cannot create a power for their control greater 
than themselves, stronger than the strength of their 
rights. How much less could a few millions people 
living more than a century ago institute an arbitrary 
power over the lives of seventy-five millions living to- 
day. This fixity the fathers did not claim for the basic 
provisions of our government. The blunder we com- 
mit is a sickly and enervating over-reverence. When 
the constitution comes to be regarded as unyielding, 
its primal provisions not subject to modifications, it is 
we that err. The founders of American institutions 
lived too near monarchy to found a complete democ- 
racy; the people of that day were too recently subject 
to forms of oppression to be able to grasp in fullness 
the liberties of democracy. The restrictions they had 
been made to conform to did not teach them to try to 
establish a like arbitrary power for the control of future 
generations. 

Not that our charter could be broader and better, but 
how its provisions may be adhered to and how may be 
preserved the scope of personal liberty in the realms of 
political and social activities aimed at by its provisions, 
is the consideration for the earnest student and admirer 
of American institutions. How to widen the range of 
these liberties and direct them into the channels best 



144 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

suited to the demands of progress must also -be their 
theme. 

That we have drifted from a close adherence to the 
spirit of early construction and administration of consti- 
tutional provisions is plain. The preamble to the con- 
stitution declares one of the objects of the latter's opera- 
tions is to establish justice. This furnishes the text 
from which are made arguments as to the failure of the 
constitution. The drifting away from the ideas of the 
fathers has progressed to a point many believe to be 
an absolute incompetency of these ideas. Having 
drifted, how we are to get back concerns all. 

In a form of government in which the sole power is 
derived from the people governed, the assumption of 
power by officials to whom has not been delegated 
power in the point at question is contrary to the terms 
upon which officials are chosen. Officials under such 
terms have no personal choice to gratify. It is their 
business to act as instructed by their constituency. The 
concentration of the exercise of power in the combina- 
tion and coalition of officials to pervert legislative, judi- 
cial and administrative power, or to desecrate these pow- 
ers by the adoption, construction and enforcement of 
laws contrary to constitutional provision and spirit, de- 
mands close watch by the minute-men of constitutional 
liberty. There have been all these errors in our law 
operating force in the recent past. Congresses and 
executives elected for specific purposes have prostituted 
their official powers to defeat the will of the people and 
for the furtherance of clique schemes inimical to the 
good of the people and subservient to class interests. 
Judicial renderings on measures fitted to give partial 
relief to the burdens, bearing Atlas-like on the shoulders 
of labor, have said to the revenue creating power, You 
shall raise revenue in one way only — that by oppressive 



CONSTITUTIONAL 145 

tax measures that wring from the middle classes and the 
poor a large percentage of the wages they find it so hard 
a matter to command. Legislative bodies, executive 
and judiciary have singly or in combination injured the 
people they act for and whom they are supposed to 
serve and represent, not in a single instance only. In 
repeated combinations, in part or alone, have these ends 
been wrought. So the word has been sent out that the 
constitution is a failure; that the people have been be- 
trayed by the powers they have created and in whom 
they trust. An absolute monarch cannot betray the 
people over whom he holds sway. He may butcher, 
starve, insult, but so long as they delegate to him full 
power over their lives and liberty, claiming for them- 
selves no part in the control of these and failing to de- 
mand or seize and exercise a share in the government 
of their lives, all are the despot's to do with as it pleases 
him. But when an elective people elevate to office a 
body of men to perform an expressed desire in certain 
proposed remedies for public ills, and this body fails 
to do the work they were selected and salaried to do, let 
the failure be either neglect or substitution of other 
plans, then the people who elected them for a purpose 
are betrayed. The failure of any congress to carry 
into action the promises or to bring about the laws de- 
manded and pledged by the platforms on which mem- 
bers stood and were judged by the constituencies 
electing them, is treason to the people electing them if 
a majority of the members were elected on these assur- 
ances. It is perjury of their word to those for whom 
they were asked to act in official capacity. 

The failure of an executive officer to square his 
actions and recommendations to the platform principles 
that secured his election is Arnoldism from which we 
have suffered much of late. Officers are not elected in 

10 



146 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

representative governments to perform their own wills, 
but the will of the people whose servants they are, or 
are supposed to be. No plea of expediency should be 
permitted to defeat this. Private opinions on the part 
of such officials must give place in act to conformity to 
ante-election pledges. The public are not judges of a 
candidate's private views if he entertains opinions con- 
trary to his party declaration of faith. They choose by 
his profession of principles. By our present bungling 
method of electing presidents, a minority of the people 
can and frequently do fill this office with their representa- 
tive. This is one of the absurdities which our persistent 
adherence to early forms continues to tolerate despite 
the abuses it permits. The citizen thus singled out for 
an arduous and erstwhile patriotic task should recom- 
mend and further the passage of those laws he has 
pledged himself to secure. He must not, if representa- 
tive government continues, advocate a principal with a 
secondary and upon election urge and secure the second- 
ary to the postponement and neglect of the principal, 
and anything but what we look for him to accomplish. 
This has been too much the way with late presidents. 
In this way we have been playing a game of haphazard 
that has issued in determinate conditions that call for 
thanksgivings if the executive head of the nation does 
not do the exact opposite of what he was elected to do. 
There has been no class in American political activities 
as greatly surprised by these acrobatic tendencies of 
presidents as the parties responsible for the election of 
the acrobat. Pledges amount to nothing. We would 
be as secure as to the outcome if any sort of nondescript 
man should be picked up and made president, as official 
action in this capacity seems to go by the law of con- 
trariety, and just how much this law will operate events 
only can determine. The chief executive who follows 



CONSTITUTIONAL 147 

his own will when opposed to the promises he gave pre- 
vious to his election exercises the prerogative of an 
hereditary monarch in all its unhappiest features. 

Judicial renderings vitiating the fundamental proposi- 
tions of our basis of government have grown to a degree 
of seriousness that must soon call for an accounting if 
continued. The property clauses interpreted in a way 
to beggar the majority in the economic interests of the 
minority cannot perpetuate their own decisions as pre- 
cedents for an honorable construction. These decisions, 
while not transgressing the language of constitutional 
provisions, so flagrantly outrage all fair conceptions of 
the spirit of property rights and equality that a direct 
refutation of rights and equality before the law in these 
matters would be scarcely more out of keeping with the 
thought of the people. Perhaps the most unexpected 
perversion of constitutional integrity is to be found in 
this unfriendly attitude of the judiciary toward the enact- 
ments that have a tendency to equalize burdens and the 
efforts of this same law-interpreting force to promote the 
graspings of the moneyed classes. Its assumption in 
law enforcement where the extension of authority by 
the classes must be reinforced by the arm of the law, 
whose only strength is derived from the people it essays 
to crush, is another striking evidence that the true use 
of the courts is being violated. In no other one of the 
departments of our government does a venality of pros- 
tituted trusts show so glaringly forth as in the judicial 
branch, the branch of all others that should be safe- 
guarded from corrupt influences. If the laws, primal 
and special, be turned to the crippling of the masses, 
dark indeed is the outlook. In an apparent race to out- 
vie each other the minor courts have followed pantingly 
in the pace set by the supreme department that classed 
as unconstitutional a tax provision that would have re- 



148 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

quired of all to bear in proportion to ability their share 
in the expenses of government. This decision left, in 
effect, the entire burden of taxation to be carried by 
labor. Tentative and even aggressive trespasses on the 
common rights of the people are thus being made. These 
are the beginnings whose end is not in sight while the 
tendencies they indicate are unchecked. 

The appointive power in judgeships is too circuitous 
to conform to the spirit of free institutions. There is a 
lively sympathy with the people who elect them on the 
part of officials elected by direct vote. This sympathy 
is entirely absent from the conduct of officials whose 
tenure of office is not dependent upon the approval of 
the voters. A direct vote on all officers connected with 
the judiciary would keep the courts in touch with the 
people. It would likewise exercise a wholesome re- 
straining influence over all acts bearing on the relative 
power of classes and masses and undoubtedly keep the 
system freer from the corrupting influences of place 
power than we now know. There are those who argue, 
with much reason, for the abolition of the judiciary in 
the capacity we now experience. It seems certain that 
with the fullest expression of popular will in law-making 
there would be no need of interpreters. Laws to be 
intelligently voted upon by the people would be suffi- 
ciently explicit for all to understand without an expen- 
sive court system to explain. The will of the people by 
such a law-creating system would express the constitu- 
tionality of the measures accepted, so there would be no 
question as to validity of enactments. It looks beauti- 
fully simple, grandly fair. It would involve the abolition 
of representative government as we now know it, but 
there have been no good arguments advanced for the 
continuation of such representative government, so- 
called, as we have known of late years. The failure of 



CONSTITUTIONAL 149 

the judiciary to keep inviolate the principles of our insti- 
tutions is the source of the clamor it has caused. No 
department of existing governmental machinery has been 
assailed on any other ground but that of failure and 
insufficiency in the world assigned as its dominion. 

Much of the apparent instability of public choice of 
men, measures and parties, and much of the fickleness 
charged against the voting element is due to this uncal- 
culated and incalculable vacillation of men chosen for 
a direct purpose who fail in its performance. That 
voters appear to know not what they want is chargeable 
to the fact that they rarely get what they ask for or are 
promised. The last four presidential elections, through 
the operations of our election machinery, have alternately 
shifted on representatives of the democratic or repub- 
lican party the responsibility of government in the ex- 
ecutive department. The one-term policy seems to 
show the inability of the people to find a representative 
who will express their desires, as well as showing many 
other things equally unhappy. No fixed policy of na- 
tional administration appearing, and failure to keep faith 
as voters conceive faith to be, the law of revenge for 
neglected trust, for faith betrayed, writes Mene, Mene, 
before the eyes of the delinquents. 

As it is with administrations, so is it with congresses 
and all other expressions of public choice in matters po- 
litical. These rapid and unexpected transfers we call 
landslides. But even landslides do not occur without 
full cause. The loosening process must reach a certain 
stage before the land can slide. As long as the causes 
continue landslides will occur, for the cause present, the 
slides help to preserve final equilibrium. This is as true 
in the realm of politics as in the realm of nature. Des- 
potic heads of congresses who apply gag rule; who 
render the body powerless by a fixed determination to 



150 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

do nothing and permit nothing to be done contrary to 
the will of the despot; who establish quorums by count 
and measure with the inflexible rule of personal ambi- 
tions friend and foe alike, express evidences of monar- 
chical tendencies on the part of elective officials which 
have caused seemingly solid earth to slide from under 
the feet of usurping monarchists. Municipal corrup- 
tions unequaled and failures and corruptions in state 
rule are the causes in their own spheres for the remarka- 
ble shiftings of control there. These changes may not 
at present accomplish much ; they may only indicate the 
restlessness of the people under the repeated betrayals 
their representatives have subjected them to. They may 
portend a change greater yet, one that for a time will 
render impossible the practices we have suffered from. 
The people are a judge of fraud and inefficiency after an 
experience with them. 

The way of escape from these unconstitutional condi- 
tions and renderings is plain. The right of amendment 
guarantees any freedom of action. Equality of rights 
may be arrived at by means that treason itself cannot 
defeat as contrary to the spirit of our great charter. 
Direct vote for all officers will destroy the disposition of 
making a public office a means of money-getting. The 
abolition of offices that have by late tendencies been 
found unsafe can be reached and unworthy officials who 
consider themselves well intrenched in custom and law- 
clad security may be set aside for those who will not 
betray the people for whom they have been asked to act. 
All this can be accomplished and more. Direct vote on 
all measures of public importance would remove law- 
making from the influence of jobbers. The will of the 
people is supreme and there is no department of political 
activity they do not or may not control. As a right, 



CONSTITUTIONAL 151 

they are certainly free to govern according to their de- 
sires, the economic, as well as the political life of the 
nation. How far the exercise of that right should at 
present be given play is a question that engages much 
discussion. There are industries that by the nature of 
power in the commercial world suggest the desirability 
of an immediate general control, as there are many 
features of our political system calling for a closer con- 
nection with the people. 

Methods become obsolete with the age and condition 
that called them into form. In the rapid evolution of 
American social and civil life the methods of fifty years 
ago are too restrictive for to-day and unable to maintain 
the equality we have pledged ourselves to preserve. 
Aside from their innate powerlessness at the best to meet 
the needs of present-day necessities, those methods, good 
in their day, have been reversed, their better features 
restricted in a manner to altogether unfit them for pres- 
ent use. The early spirit has been subverted, and that 
to the hurt of the body of people. Offices are looked 
upon as a power for personal advancement — the good 
of the people is a minor consideration or a direct antago- 
nism to the schemes of the officeholder. In the latter 
case the scheme is not the consideration that suffers. 
Poor men go into offices the fixed salaries of which are 
no more than will maintain the incumbents in a manner 
of living compatible with the dignity of the position. 
These men frequently lay down the responsibilities of 
office — and its opportunities — rich men, sometimes very 
rich men even in the present magnified use of the term. 
Here is a reverse; formerly wealthy men entered office 
and came out no richer than they went in. Sometimes 
they came out with fortunes impaired or perhaps ruined. 
Their necessary neglect of personal business resulted in 
a decline of their personal wealth. But the nation pros- 



152 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

pered under their rule. The unpurchasable virtue of 
that early time is what the world expects of the guardians 
of nations. In this commercial age the corrupters of 
venal officials argue with effect the necessity of every 
man's providing for himself! It is becoming particu- 
larly true of us that most men have a price. That price 
is often the betrayal of their friends. The apprehension 
of this is the cause of outcries against existing political 
institutions. The shame of nations is corrupt officials, 
the betrayal of nations is the price they pay for their 
trust in traitors. It is time to direct into different chan- 
nels and to enlarge the scope of personal freedom in 
civil matters that shall preserve and forward the good 
of society. The time is opportune, for encroachments 
have proceeded to a point where no doubt can remain 
as to the ultimate object and not yet to a point where 
force of arms will be necessary to demonstrate to the 
world that personal liberty and rights have come as a 
perpetual corollary to governments. The way is yet 
open through constitutional provisions for such changes 
as may be deemed necessary and acceptable. But each 
succeeding betrayal of trust on the part of those in 
power makes this way less possible. 

It is neither the breadth nor narrowness of our funda- 
mental laws that calls forth the biased dispensations we 
are experiencing. It is the narrowness, the biased con- 
structions that create and perpetuate abuses. The pro- 
visions as first made acceptably served the nation in 
days past, but must not be regarded as fixed. They 
were only as the inelastic case infolding the chrysalis 
life, and in due time they should have been burst asunder 
that the life might grow to a more beautiful form and 
develop a broader freedom. Those early provisions are 
too restrictive for our present needs. The growth of 
population multiplies in operation the complexities of 



CONSTITUTIONAL 153 

the system of government. The fundamental errors 
growing out of the present dispensation are indirect gov- 
ernment, with the abuses unavoidable to such a method, 
and the construction of property clauses into enactments 
favorable to classism that operate to progressively 
strengthen those in whose favor discriminations are 
made. All other false constructions aim at the strength- 
ening of these two mistakes. It is the wealth concen- 
tration supported by political inequalities that betrays 
and ultimately tears down and disintegrates nations. 
Our charter is broad enough, just enough in its pro- 
visions for the growth of new forces to give the bless- 
ings it aimed at to all who come within its scope of 
action. But we have not preserved its intentions. The 
right of amendment in provisions contrary to the highest 
good fits us for a progressive life easily graduated to the 
new conditions we are yearly developing. This right the 
constitution itself guarantees; this right in the power 
of a people over their lives is superior to any law or tra- 
dition binding them. But its strength is less than the 
strength of superstition, and it is to the point of super- 
stition that many carry their reverence for early forms. 
Nations need not decay, might go from glory to 
glory if their w T arders would observe justice and spurn 
all tendencies to classism. While equality of oppor- 
tunity is maintained and laws preserving the rigiits of 
all are adhered to, no nation can fall of its own weak- 
ness. Strength cannot grow out of an abnormal devel- 
opment of one part, for such development comes only 
through the weakening of other parts. All may be 
great, but if one be greatest the equality at once ceases. 
Of the sum of the people's strength, if abnormal strength 
be given one class, all other classes must be weakened 
in the proportion that the strengthened class draws from 



154 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the sum the strength that should go to each class in 
equitable distribution. 

The constitution nowhere expressly provides that one 
man shall treat another justly. Yet justice between men 
was the hope animating the fathers, and such provisions 
as were thought necessary were created to guard the 
rights of all. It shows no clause declaring that one sec- 
tion of our country, one class of our people, should be 
built up at the expense of tearing down another section 
or class, or even at the slightest disadvantage of others. 
At the time it was formulated and adopted such inequali- 
ties of wealth and opportunity distribution were not ex- 
isting here and sufficient safeguards against them were 
adopted. The fathers read the history of past oppressions 
with a care to the avoidance of their repetition. They 
could not provide and legislate for all time. They could 
but clear ground and lay the foundation. The superstruc- 
ture must show the handiwork of their successors. Deem- 
ing that an alert and patriotic people would by strength 
of ballot power be sufficient guard to their own liberties 
they declared that before the law, before the country, 
and in the honors, the toils, and in the consideration of 
the commonwealth they were to found, one man should 
stand the equal of others as he stands before God. This 
recognized political equality involves all equality. That 
developments have drawn sharp distinctions, making 
three classes in the social family where they thought one 
enough is not the fault of the fathers and their plan, but 
the fault of the sons and their execution of the plan. 

That all men are equal in the law of the universe is a 
truth more solemn, more plain, more emphasized than 
which there is none recorded in the Sacred Writings, nor 
in all ages spoken by lips inspired. The immortal 
declaration of truths in government upon which we have 



CONSTITUTIONAL 155 

hoped to base our institutions proclaims the equality of 
man to be the fundamental principle of all justice in 
governments. Yet by our usage of the constitution we 
have as much abrogated the spirit of this, the underlying 
principle of our fundamental law, as though the required 
number of states had endorsed an amendment which 
would read : Congress shall appoint a certain number 
of citizens of the United States, not to exceed three in 
number to every one hundred thousand inhabitants, the 
number appointed to diminish as the population in- 
creases, who shall have power over the rest of the citi- 
zens to command their services to carry forward such 
work or works as shall result in the aggrandizement of 
the three citizens in every one hundred thousand, or a 
less number per one hundred thousand as congress shall 
provide. The laborers or those who work for the inter- 
ests of the citizens set aside to receive the wealth of the 
majority shall be paid such sums only or shall receive 
such percentage of the wealth they fashion as those who 
control them shall find it to their own personal interests 
to pay, and the majority are restrained from strikes and 
protests of all forms by such penalties as congress shall 
deem wise and prudent for the preservation of the com- 
mon peace. Congress shall further provide that employ- 
ers have such control over the acts of employes as 
will secure the political support and activities of all to 
such use as shall be by employers deemed necessary to 
promote the best interests of the country. Such an 
amendment, if proposed, would get its author hanged, 
no doubt. But for the men who have made its supposed 
provisions to approach reality, we order another fate — 
usually one that helps toward the possibility of a virtual 
amendment of this import. The entire argument for 
such a law at once suggests itself : the necessity for em- 
ployers to be enabled to pay good wages ; the protective 



156 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

care for employes, surpassing the solicitude of a father 
for his child; the incompetence of labor to determine a 
fair rate of compensation for a day's work; the restless- 
ness of labor when employers cannot comply with the 
demands of hungry workers ; and above all, the inability 
of men absorbed in bread-getting to judge what men are 
best suited to the control of state, what measures are 
best fitted to bring relief to insupportable conditions. 
The support of such a measure would save much ex- 
haustive brain work on the part of the eager defenders 
of plutocracy. Editorials that in the past supported 
features of such an all-inclusive measure could be reset. 
Pamphlets published for a like purpose could be put 
through another colossal edition. Speeches that have 
for thirty years summed up these arguments could with 
little work be polished up to fit the occasion with a pre- 
cision unsurpassed by the latest discoveries in that line. 
All the campaign devices so effective of late years would 
do service here. The very statement that the three men 
in every one hundred thousand were to control the ser- 
vices of the rest would imply work, and would not the 
ability to pay high wages insure their payment? We 
have always heard so. What things that ability implies; 
how much it would be made to accomplish in such a 
campaign! Why, here, poor, erring brother, is an ad- 
vance on the payment of wages you are to receive when 
the three come into possession of their fullest ability. 
Take the trifling sum as an earnest of the great things 
that are to come to you if the right man is elected. But, 
by the way, see to it that you vote for the man represent- 
ing the measure ; this money, you know, is but an ad- 
vance made from his promise of ability to pay wages. 
If you should fail to vote for him he must lock up, for 
where would his ability to pay wages be found if the 
whole country goes to the devil, whose wages are even 



CONSTITUTIONAL 157 

less than you now receive ? Not even new arguments to 
voters in those confidential talks between hired and hirer 
just before election! A great saving of time and 
strength, surely. 

Our difficulty is found in the perversion of constitu- 
tional privileges and provisions. The constitution no- 
where provides that citizens shall not be taxed in pro- 
portion to the wealth they command or in proportion to 
their ability to meet expenses of government. It does 
provide that congress shall take such act as will result 
in revenue for the satisfaction of expenses of govern- 
ment. It nowhere provides that in and under pretext 
of revenue collections, congress shall levy tariff taxes 
in such a way that one dollar goes into the government 
treasury and three into the treasury of the home manu- 
facturer who is in competition with the foreign manufac- 
turer of the taxed article. The power to regulate trade 
carries with it no such monstrous construction for the 
support of the discriminations we have suffered from. 
It might with more fairness and closer conformity to 
the principles of our institutions be held to govern these 
tendencies to wealth concentration and monopolizations 
that have thrown our industrial machinery out of bal- 
ance. It nowhere provides that congress shall regulate 
trade in a manner that compels the producing classes to 
pay tribute to the non-producers, that while the great 
portion of our people are in competition with the world, 
as they must always be, a small number shall be so sup- 
ported by law that the helplessness of their countrymen 
and the workers of the world shall be the source from 
which they draw great riches. There are many things 
the constitution does not provide, but which its distor- 
tions make manifest. 

Of the two methods of raising revenue, one a tax on 
incomes above a given amount yearly, and the other that 



158 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

creates, principally, revenue for the protected monopolist, 
and incidentally revenue for the country, and that by 
highly taxing the necessities of the laborer, few would 
hesitate to say which antagonizes the spirit and provi- 
sions of the constitution. Our supreme court, sup- 
posed to embody the supreme justice and legal wisdom 
of the country, pronounced the former unconstitutional. 
Should a test be made and the same court asked to pro- 
nounce upon the constitutionality of laws that virtually 
deprive men of the greater part of their earnings for the 
benefit, the so-called protection, of those who have mo- 
nopolized the industrial opportunities of the country, 
those who have questioned the integrity and desirability 
of a continuation of this body would have a further 
opportunity of judgment. If a test could be made of 
the laws that make it possible for a few men to put up 
the price of coal, flour, and other necessities, or a test 
made of the land laws in their multiplied results, we 
could know where the courts stand in the question ot 
opportunities of the rich vs. necessities on the part of 
the commonalty. The results of these relations in in- 
dustry are suffering and death, with a greater loss to 
the nation than both suffering and death are able to 
inflict. The apparent indifference to this arrangement is, 
on the part of the law power, relieved only by an attitude 
of absolute hostility toward the interests of the common 
people. So our courts are coming to lose the appella- 
tion of courts of justice and are earning that of courts 
of injustice. 

Any court of justice could not do less than pronounce 
our conditions contrary to our fundamental law, unrea- 
sonable, unjust. They are all three. Unconstitutional 
for the basis of constitutionality is found in the doctrine 
that grants freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness with special privileges to none and without 



CONSTITUTIONAL 159 

specification or generalization that one man or several 
men are to be the beneficiaries of the labor and earnings 
of others. Unreasonable, for there is nothing in the 
mind, logic or sophistry of man that can with a show of 
reason endorse the terms that eventuate in such uncom- 
promising inequalities. Unjust, for the essence of jus- 
tice is embodied in equality of opportunity. They could 
without hesitation be classed as uncivilized; barbar- 
ism, savagery, abounds with favors to those who can 
seize and hold them, with "devil take the hindmost" sen- 
timent. 

There is no plea to be offered in extenuation of the 
crimes against the common people that have been com- 
mitted under the perversions of our charter. If the con- 
ditions that now govern production and distribution 
were aimed at by the fathers, then they instead and in 
pretense of establishing a free republic that would truly 
be a home of the oppressed and the hope of all, have 
fastened on us monarchism of a most subtle and danger- 
ous kind. If they promised us freedom and gave us 
slavery, then our laws and conditions are constitutional, 
instituting as they do wealth beyond computation in a 
few families, death by starvation, by shame, by despair, 
in thousands, whose numbers are to be told by the hun- 
dreds of thousands of late years in this land of plenty. 
If these laws and conditions are constitutional, then in 
order to establish the justice we have been supposed to 
be guided by there is work to be done. Work in the 
amendment of the constitution by the methods pre- 
scribed until equity be established. Or if that way be 
too circuitous, too much impeded, abolish the constitu- 
tion as it stands and establish in its stead a fundamental 
code that will order for us the safety we have supposed 
we rested in. If the laws that cause inequalities to reign 
are contrary to the spirit of constitutionally guaranteed 



160 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

rights, the way is open to the abolition of them, for the 
crushing out of all that are monarchical in tendency. 
Let us have justice and democracy, the twin companions 
of civilization. Let us have them, no matter What goes 
to give them place. Reverence, superstitious regard for 
form, has been from the beginning the weapon of the 
hypocrite and traitor in statecraft. 

Anti-trust laws may be spread from cover to cover of 
statute books and the evils from which our people suffer 
in industrial inequalities will grow. All provisions seek- 
ing a limitation of operation in these evils are gendered 
by ignorance or chicanery if the power by which the op- 
pressors flourish is left untouched. Dropping out of 
consideration the so-called constitutionality of laws; 
leaving out all question of justice and moral right, the 
commonest of sense and the law of preservation demands 
the defense and guarding in their property rights of all 
the citizens. No society is secure without this protec- 
tion, but provisions looking to this assurance are nulli- 
fied in an industrial state where a necessity to production 
is subject to the control of private interests. Property 
rights in equality do not exist where monopolizations by 
individuals is practiced in the distribution of resources 
and opportunities. Of what avail is it to say that the 
man who hires labor must pay so much money for so 
much work when grinding down his share of the rewards 
of production is a power that assesses him, for the oppor- 
tunity of producing, to a degree that makes higher wages 
impossible? He will simply suspend business or go out 
permanently. If he controls both the opportunity and 
the productive capital he will be able to go on even 
though he be unable to evade the law. Trusts and all 
forms of illegal combinations in business will be able to 
do their work in serene contempt of laws trying to abol- 
ish them or restrict their operation if the basis of mo- 



CONSTITUTIONAL 161 

nopolization is left them. Anti-trust laws so far have 
only been barren confessions of the existence of indus- 
trial oppressions. Their efforts to counteract the evils 
following primary inequalities are a futility from which 
we gain only one good. This is the evidence that the 
world of labor and law-framing are coming to see the 
necessity for action of some kind relative to an equali- 
zation in the possession of the results of toil. 

A promising feature of all agitations in social, eco- 
nomic and political lines is the altruistic spirit that is 
beginning to permeate the universal thought along these 
lines. Aside from all legal enactments to that end, we 
are learning that society is bound together by the ties 
of common interest; that we are united in the bonds of 
kindness and self-preservation to protect one another 
in rights of property, rights of society, rights of con- 
science. What we do for mankind, the blessings we help 
to call forth and insure for our commonwealth or the 
race, we share in. We cannot be secure in any of these 
beyond the security of the generation in which we live. 
This truth has been known in all ages and civilizations, 
and ages and civilizations have manifested tendencies 
peculiar to the time in the preservation and security of 
these rights. Force of arms was a common resort ; trick 
and intrigue were likewise favorites. Upon these de- 
fenses no lasting security can be guaranteed. But all 
ages and civilizations have not lacked those who would 
tear down the state, tear down civilization, tear down 
humanity to the service of selfish ends. The world to- 
day holds a greater fund of active humanitarianism than 
ever before, and more clearly sees the ruin waiting on all 
forms of discriminations affecting inharmoniously the 
social state, but the greed of the world has not been 
safely reined. The only nations reaching a high level of 
civilization and surviving the influence of Greed and 
ii 



162 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Classism are those existing to-day, and how much they 
owe their survival down to the present time to the ab- 
sence of the time test is not to be said. Some are deteri- 
orating now, others are hastening in a more rapid 
decline, and if the disintegrating causes be not removed 
nothing can avert their ruin. Greed and Classism is the 
danger signal they have flaunted by. Of the nations in 
the past strong in world influence, Greed and Classism is 
the warning epitaph history has engraven in ineradicable 
characters upon their sepulchers. 

To-day Greed and Classism are the forces that are 
working death in our own country when we ought to be 
in the early stages of a progressive life. Like the tippler 
who is strong in the conceit of his youthful foolhardiness 
and does not believe himself in danger until the time of 
safety is past, so do we play with evil and think no harm 
will come of it. We grant privileges that are directly 
opposed to the spirit of our constitution, that antago- 
nize the thought and traditions of our people ; we make 
laws to favor classes; we succumb to the demands and 
power of industrial institutions we have created contrary 
to all our sentiments of justice and under whose domina- 
tion industry becomes a force for the crushing of the 
masses. If we continue as we have been going, worse 
will befall. The current begins to run swift and the ship 
of state swings and plunges to every eddy and ripple. 
Those who listen closely can even now hear the roar of 
the cataract ahead as the suppressed cries of the wretched 
millions. Yet the captain, Greed, cries for more steam, 
the pilot, Classism, calls for more sail, and the ship's 
company look at the boiling track left behind and shout 
in exultation, "How rapidly we move !" and in the noise 
and merriment they do not hear the voice of the cataract 
nearing them with each leap. The company trust the cap- 
tain and pilot. There are danger signals along the bank, 



CONSTITUTIONAL 163 

but the captain orders the ship to be kept well out in the 
mid-stream, so the company cannot read them; there 
are sharp rocks in the path, but the pilot skillfully avoids 
them and the company gives him much praise. The 
captain and pilot bid the ship's company to look back at 
the path left by the ship to note the receding landmarks 
and the dangerous rocks safely passed. And the cap- 
tain and pilot say, "How rapidly we move!" The com- 
pany, looking back, repeat it and give the ship's man- 
agers more praise. 

Have you never heard that same word of praise? 
It is mostly spoken in a form as "marvelous progress in 
industrial enterprise," "unequaled increase of riches/' 
and other words that only mean "how rapidly we move !" 
The captain, Greed, and the pilot, Classism, hear us with 
exultation and know they are safe in our acceptation of 
the term. 

There is a great amount of falsity spoken in our efforts 
to appear to ourselves and to others as we would like to 
be able to stand. We talk at confidence building with 
an effort painful to witness, harping on the unrivaled 
attractions of America as a paradise for the oppressed; 
a place w r here all may become prosperous ; where priva- 
tions are the choice of those too ambitionless to work. 
All this was true sixty years ago, was largely true forty 
years ago. How far from true to-day let observation, 
let daily happenings, witness. 

We boast our increase in wealth, failing to consider 
that by the terms of its unequal possession it is a source 
of weakness to us, a curse instead of a blessing. In a 
community of two if one man has great wealth and the 
other is without wealth and kept from creating wealth, 
the man who has wealth can corrupt him who has none, 
can command, can buy him. What is true in a com- 
munity of two is true of a community where they who 



164 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

have wealth stand as three to a hundred who have neither 
wealth nor the opportunity of producing wealth. The 
era of class legislation was begun and augmented by the 
conditions introduced at the period of the civil war. 
Specialties in class legislation had their foundation 
already in the practice of subjecting natural opportuni- 
ties of wealth production to the control of individuals. 
The impetus given Classism in the special legislation of 
the civil war has been steadily supported in the same 
way since. With the entrance of this order the condi- 
tions favorable to human happiness commenced the dimin- 
ishing process at a rate increased beyond the natural 
progress attending the operation of monopolizing op- 
portunities. The two have hastened the day when either 
would have collected the strength that now makes them 
destructive of the common prosperity. 

There are classes whose prosperity can be assured in 
only one way — that of freedom from despoilment. They 
are without the pale of positive measures of befriending 
import. Their rights in the consideration of trade regu- 
lations, in the propositions of tax apportionments, in all 
phases of property rights are equal with all other classes. 
That they have been set aside, sheep for the shearers, 
their toil a golden fleece to those who command it, is 
not due to the principles of government we have built 
upon. It is the result of carelessness on our part and 
the viciousness characterizing late constructions. 

It is the perverter of constitutional rights that says, 
to lull our fears, "How rapidly we move!" Privileges to 
those who can grasp and hold them has grown to be the 
property clause of the constitution by latest construction. 



CHAPTER VII. 

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. 

The birth of a political party is the result of a condi- 
tion in society or government that a man or men feel to 
be demanding a change, feel to be no longer endurable. 
The man, or men, evolve a theory of remedy for the, to 
them, unbearable condition and straightway begin to 
call attention to the evil, the necessity for its abolition, 
and their theory for its abolition. Others are persuaded 
of the evil, the danger of its continuation, the wisdom of 
the remedy proposed. After a while a little convention 
is held. The little convention is ignored, it is not im- 
portant enough to call out even contempt. When the 
convention has grown some the rest of the world per- 
ceive that it is a fact ; theorists, dreamers, the critics say, 
struggling for the impossible to be accomplished by 
impossible means. In a few years the growth is more 
undeniable and it is then scoffed at and made the object 
at which witticisms as well as invectives are trained. A 
few more years and a larger hall is employed to accom- 
modate the delegates and then the platform is discussed 
as a real factor in the political world, and true to the 
experience of all like expressions, if not pronounced 
visionary and impracticable it is said to be ruinous to the 
good of the country. The leaders are called dangerous 
men waiting but an opportunity to wreck the country 
through ignorant defiance of the — ideas of some other 
patriot, — and we have another political party. 

It is the same with new issues, with the new calls to 
action to meet new conditions. The new party, the new 



166 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

issue or the revived issue may not do more than call 
away from other parties a small following. The new or 
revived idea may become so powerful in sections that 
conciliations in the way of fusions are resorted to. It 
may result in a merging of different factions until some- 
thing formidable appears. The effort has not been in 
vain. It has helped to keep men thinking which is the 
mission of the partisan organization. It gives them 
something to think about, — if no more than how to de- 
vise ways of obviating the new demand by offering 
something said to be better or by deceiving its adherents 
into the belief that the older order offers the same thing to 
be arrived at by entirely different methods ; persuading 
the reformers how to arrive at a point to the west by 
traveling east on an uncurving surface, or as closely west 
as directly south leads. The disturbing idea may with 
credit endorse a candidate of another party, may take a 
position that will enable it to hold the balance of power 
and so practically assert and make good its position and 
take itself out of the list of ignored things. When it 
reaches this stage it serves the wholesome purpose of 
keeping the people awake which is a prime necessity in 
representative government. In the route of orderly pro- 
gress the new idea as it. first appeared or in modified 
form is adopted as a part of the life of the political or- 
ganization and the impossible has been accomplished, 
the visionary has become actuality in the life of world 
forms and the thing dangerous has become in a measure 
the salvation of the very institutions it was feared to 
threaten. Representative government was once an im- 
possibility in the fears and opinions of man, a disloyalty 
to order and right, a skull and cross-bones to constituted 
government. Freedom of conscience was all these and 
worse, so much worse that whereas men frequently lost 
life for believing and talking either, at that time new 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 167 

idea, the latter carried with this loss the further and in- 
comparable loss of the soul ! Let not the idealist of the 
present age be discouraged. His cherished "impossi- 
bilities" are not so much in advance of actualities as was 
at one time representative government and freedom of 
conscience. Nor are they more bitterly opposed. 

Upheavals in partisan organizations have in the last 
few years had all the purifying effects on the political 
atmosphere in this country that blood draining revolu- 
tions produce in other countries. The machine power 
and the voting power find they can no longer dwell in 
unity unless the latter choose to smother conscience for 
the sake of harmony, a thing honest men will not do, a 
thing they cannot do. The result of this discovery is 
in the end that dissatisfied elements seek more harmoni- 
ous companionship, that negative lines up with negative, 
positive with positive and the possibility of actual move- 
ment is assured. A fair exchange in gains and losses 
with a fair lesson. Schisms within, we are taught, are 
not to be truced with the olden sham of party first and 
principle afterward. This is a lesson the machine ele- 
ment of American politics has long needed. It is one 
the machine product known as politician would do well 
to heed. When all who have firm convictions on a public 
question comprehend the effectiveness of a vote cast with 
the party promising legislation along the line they de- 
sire, dillydallying with vital issues will cease and there 
will be less of broken faith on the part of public servants. 
As one important matter is taken up for consideration 
at a time, as of late, it gives an opportunity for all to 
express themselves in a way permitting them to vote 
with party for principle if possible, principle without 
party if they must, or as has been often and is still some- 
what, party without principle if that is the voter's con- 
ception of being a franchise holder in a land where the 



168 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

ballot is designed to rule. That the ballot has not ruled 
more completely is not the fault of the system so much as 
of the misapplication of the power. The way is given 
whereby we may have whatever laws we desire. To se- 
cure them requires, in the most direct form of govern- 
ment, courage and honesty on the part of those exercis- 
ing ballot rights. There are always two forces bidding 
for control in government and an elective people may 
choose either. If we prefer to put ourselves under 
bondage to powers that have no other conception of 
government than the jobs, we must be content to be 
governed by job rule. If the demand made is emphatic 
enough we will get those measures we ask for no matter 
how strong the job forces may seem to be. Vacillation, 
subserviency will be met with treachery. Let us not ex- 
pect bread when we ask for a stone. This has been our 
asking many times ; truly, it has been our strong prayer 
and demand. 

The demonstration of the advancing position of vot- 
ers in regard to political standards is a happy feature in 
a case that presents otherwise phases that are dark and 
which would seem well-nigh hopeless to the future of 
representation as we have tried to realize it. Happily for 
us the night of blind faith in party leaders and party ten- 
ets has begun to lift away before the dawn of a day of 
freedom in thought and act whose promise is of a higher 
conception of the obligation of the voter to the citizen; 
happy for us will it be if this darkness is forever banished 
or approaches banishment. There is darkness yet, but 
less servile following where reason and interest forbid. 
Party prejudices in the past have wrought much damage 
to the national condition. But experience has taught us 
some valuable lessons, among which is the truth that a 
surrender of the citizen's right, however made, nullifies 
the citizen's power. While corruption has doubtless 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 169 

been more notorious of late in some parts than ever 
before, the cause that cannot rest on its own merits is 
not to be forever a controlling policy through the 
power of bribery. A whole people cannot be bought, 
nor any considerable number for an extended time. 
Stronger reason for believing that the day is past when 
it will be found possible to change a nation's decision 
by the power of money is found in the awakening 
thought of the people as to the monstrous evils attending 
a system which makes possible such results. Corrup- 
tions in politics and the defeat of the popular will through 
the manipulations of our complex elective machinery 
will do more to hasten the day of direct control than all 
the unsupported arguments in its favor can effect. 

The opponents of free government and the public 
good are wiser than the supporters of the same. They 
do not war among themselves as to how a thing shall be 
done. They go ahead and do it. They do not dissipate 
their strength by scattering their forces. Wherever is a 
weakness there they hurl their weight. They do not 
consume their strength in factional bickerings. No mat- 
ter how diverse their opinions on lesser questions the 
main point at issue rallies the entire force to its support. 
They do not quarrel before the trap is set as to whether 
they shall stew or roast their hare; they catch it first as 
a necessary preliminary to the cooking, knowing that 
the rest is easily taken care of. Previous to the catching 
there may be a question as to how much shall go to the 
trapper, how much to the skinner, how much to the 
cook, but when the hour for action comes undecided 
questions are dropped out and all effort is directed to the 
trap. They gain by doing so and those who oppose 
their principles could with benefit follow their mode of 
procedure. If the people who hold to the same impor- 
tant ideas would combine instead of dividing into many 



170 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

opposing and self-canceling organizations the changes 
in national matters so much needed could be introduced. 
Under representative government it is the only way de- 
sired ends can be reached. Indirect legislation best 
serves those who best watch and plan and stand to- 
gether. It results oftener in the defeat of the majority 
than their triumph in our country because of peculiari- 
ties of apportionment and other like causes ; very much 
too because the majority have not yet learned that in 
union lies salvation. 

The war ever has been and ever will be democracy or 
monarchy. Representative government is middle ground, 
uncertain ground for the friends of direct government. 
Minor differences subordinated to important needs will 
coalesce the workers for free government, rebuke and 
nullify the tendency toward monarchy. 

A king of England, we are told, extracted gold from 
the Hebrew residents in his kingdom as a condition to 
not extracting their teeth, a novel and unfailing method 
in fine accord with the half-barbaric days in which it 
was practiced. Those rude times are swallowed up in 
the softness of modern estheticism and with them have 
passed the vigorous manners of a supreme king. The 
improved method of present civilization puts the wealth 
of the people into the tills of plutocracy without occa- 
sioning the expense of forceps. This control is such, 
that in the powerlessness of the people to refuse, what- 
ever the demand it must be satisfied or the people's mas- 
ters shut up shop and factory, suspend the activities of 
a national industrial system and starve a nation of work- 
ers into obedience to their behests. We are ultimately 
powerless in their grasp if powerless to break the bonds 
we have forged through their suggestion and instiga- 
tion. The laws, such puny efforts as are enacted for 
their limitation, they respect not; the laws they obey 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 171 

not unless it be those favors of legislative bodies that 
grant them immunity from the legitimate hindrances to 
trade and self-preservation on the part of labor, which 
serve to put the people more completely at the mercy 
of the unholy alliance known to and evidenced by our 
peculiarly American policy. 

While the unwilling idler sits in sorrowful repose, 
while business institutions crash down to irretrievable 
ruin and the financial world stands on the brink of chaos 
and our social state is anarchic because of disorders irri- 
tated by indecision and suspense, representative gov- 
ernment plays into the hand of plutocracy. When chil- 
dren starve because fathers are idle our lawgivers wran- 
gle in the halls of legislation for advantages to them- 
selves and their rich patrons who put them there for a 
purpose. In times of war and the necessity of immedi- 
ate revenues is imperative political bargains are driven 
and political debts are satisfied through the revenue cre- 
ating function of government. All times of peril are 
the opportunity of the traitor and indirect legislation is 
his most unfailing instrumentality. Other unexpected 
features have cropped out. Special congresses to devise 
special means for creating revenue for governmental 
purposes when soup houses are on the increase; the 
same to advance protection to the hirer in particular 
fields when his workers go hungry or start in the long 
journey Whose stop-over privileges are claimed at back 
doors and whose terminus is the potter's field; to create 
money by destroying it ; to appoint commissioners to go 
to Europe and ask permission of governments there that 
we may conduct our own affairs and guide our govern- 
ment with the sense heaven gave us, independent of the 
action, the wisdom or wishes of any other nation of earth. 
These and many others of the same class are some of the 
duties of law-making bodies and presidents as we have 



172 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

evolved them in a hundred years, this the office of rep- 
resentative government as interpreted for us, this the 
dead wall we have run up against in our march to great 
things, these a part reason for the poisonous fog of failure 
blurring our star of destiny before it fairly flashes above 
the eastern horizon. It is no pessimistic dream ; it is the 
horror that grows from over optimism. It is no nightmare 
to be shaken off with a turn of the sleeper's body ; it is the 
realest struggle that ever engaged a society, to win which 
is life, to lose which is death. 

What can we do? Rather, what must we do? Many 
things, my brother of the faint heart and down-drooped 
head, many things that are waiting to be done, but those 
things are not such as those you have been doing in the 
past. Who delivered up the glorious heritage of Jeffer- 
son, Adams, and other immortal sons of Liberty and 
champions of Human Rights ? Who suffered the scepter 
of dominion to be snatched from your hand and delivered 
into that of your enemy ? Who made these money-poten- 
cies to have power over us, who sold us from a hope of 
democracy to the fear of plutocracy ? Nothing in heaven 
or earth, but the only power, and that of earth, which 
could make it possible — and that power, ourselves. Be- 
wail not their dominion, marvel not at the tenacity of 
their clutch. Bewail rather our imbecility and stupidity 
that sat blinking in owl-like assumption of wisdom and 
approval while they spread the net before our very eyes, 
into which we stepped at invitation, still blinking, still 
assuming wisdom, still approving with the unmatchable 
approval that came of faith in the old ticket. Marvel 
rather at our timidity which has succeeded to our assump- 
tion of wisdom; marvel at our reluctance to sunder the 
bonds they have enmeshed us with, at our fear of "experi- 
menting" in a return to the orders that brought us success 
and safety in times past. Marvel still more at the caress- 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 173 

ing hands we lay on our chains while we pray deliverance 
from their oppressions. 

This is the way we have, in a measure, worked out a 
representative government. The methods by which we 
arrive at the results are as unique and expressive of rep- 
resentation by our interpretation as are the results in 
themselves. Voters driven in blocks of five to vote for 
candidates selected through adroit manipulation of nom- 
inating conventions that are in themselves largely irre- 
sponsible and often wholly misrepresentative ; intimida- 
tions, colonizations of voters, threats of dismissal from 
service, promises of increased wages, promises of work, to 
influence votes in a representative government. Purchase 
of offices, thefts of offices, gifts of offices in a representa- 
tive government. Bribery of officials, sale of constituents 
in a representative government. The ballot has been used 
by the people and by the enemy of popular government to 
enslave the people, to cripple the good right hand of labor, 
instead of strengthening, instead of preserving the rights 
of all ; to bind us closely in the thrall of monopoly rights, 
to defeat the very end for which it was created — freedom 
in the lives of the people. 

It is a great work to govern seventy-five millions of 
people. It is a work difficult to the people themselves 
when the peculiarities of the American composition are 
considered. Lack of a fixed national character is felt 
in all features of our life, but nowhere more strongly 
than in the control of the franchise right. The lawless 
elements from abroad that have been vested with the 
power of the ballot, the irresponsible and unreflecting that 
have been incorporated into our national body, their rights 
of citizenship to be used as a weapon of revenge or a 
commodity of barter as caprice or venality suggests, in- 
crease the complications ordinarily attending the preserva- 
tion of honesty in indirect government. 



174 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Many things have crept into our representative govern- 
ment and general interpretation of the object thereof that 
were not contemplated by the founders; many things 
which of themselves are contrary to all forms of govern- 
ment but that of strictest despotism. Even the forces that 
we hoped were for the preservation of society are being 
assailed. The president of an eastern college was told by 
the management to no longer teach a doctrine unpopular 
in that geographical section. Being a man and not a 
slave he must believe what his researches marshaled by 
his intelligence convinced him to be true. Speaking, he 
must speak as his conscience dictated. Because he could 
not stultify himself the clash between fidelity to conviction 
and the arrogance of power resulted in his final withdraw- 
al from that institution. A professor in a western col- 
lege has had a similar experience. The supremacy of 
money has been acknowledged in the political realm; it 
seeks to extend its sway to the fountains of learning 
where it may exercise a controlling influence far beyond 
any possible of play in the primaries or at the polls. 

Another college president has gone on record as ar- 
raigning the public school system of the country as inim- 
ical to the peace of the people. Education, he truthfully 
declares, is fitted to make men and women dissatisfied 
with social affairs as they are developing here, making 
them restless and consequently dangerous under our in- 
creasing tendency toward patricianism and plebeianism. 
He does not recommend the abolition of conditions in- 
creasing the differences in the relative economic standing 
of the classes, hence the only hope of comfort to be gained 
from his observations is the abolition of the public school 
system. It is suicidal to perpetuate in the name of educa- 
tion agencies that will increase the liability to national 
rupture, — that will inevitably bring disorder and ruin. 
This we all know but the question on which the division 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 175 

of opinion would occur will be whether we shall abolish 
the school or reform the industrial system that produces 
in the lives of the people conditions so at variance with 
the aims of education. From this man's standpoint the 
schools must go. This is the common school. The insti- 
tutions of higher learning patronized by the rich produce 
no such effect as is complained of in the people's school. 
There is not that in their educational results and sur- 
roundings which tend to produce dangerous dissatisfac- 
tion for theory is not, with their attendants, so much at 
variance with actual personal conditions. All that is 
necessary there is to keep a corps of educators in train 
with the beliefs and ambitions of the patrons, — which is 
education after a kind, education which received a backset 
at Runnymede and is completely repudiated by the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. Another, a man who has stood high 
in official circles and whose impress on public affairs has 
been unmistakable in late years, has declared that the edu- 
cated labor agitator is a foe to existing institutions. 
As this man is a friend to existing institutions it must 
follow that he is not a friend to education in those circles 
where education gives prestige to those who speak for the 
dumb, toiling, millions. When the voice of those who 
cry aloud and spare not the oppressor, is strangled, indus- 
trial slavery has won another advocate. 

We have boasted that American superiority in the fields 
of industry is due to the superior intelligence of our 
workers. It has been found as a rule to govern wages 
and estimate efficiency that better wages and superior 
work prevail in those localities where education, and con- 
sequently a high degree of intelligence, is brought to the 
assistance of natural ability of workers than are found in 
those sections lacking in these aids. The instances cited 
showing opposition to education of the masses are not the 
only evidences of hostility on the part of the enemies of 



176 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

progress. Tentative and identifying utterances of a sim- 
ilar nature increase in frequency. Beast intelligence is 
compatible with beast surroundings and less resents the 
beast's lot than does the order of intelligence that attends 
mental cultivation. In the common schools of America 
is the vivifying force in the future of the masses of Amer- 
ican freemen. There are none to guard this right but 
those who profit by it. 

Another matter we have made much of aside from the 
free ballot to maintain and guard the liberties of the peo- 
ple, is free speech. A right of free speech is certainly 
within proper limits, an accompaniment of free govern- 
ment. It is one of the surest tests of such freedom. In 
Russia free speech is prohibited, and naturally enough. 
If freedom of thought expression were permitted, his im- 
perial majesty, the czar, would hear many things pro- 
claimed from the housetops which are now whispered, 
and only in the secrecy of unhearing walls. Riot and 
anarchy would stalk the streets of St. Petersburg within 
a month after the restrictions to speech were removed, 
were not some of the restrictions that govern men's lives 
there removed also. Tyranny cannot survive discussion. 
Napoleon, the arch-despot, said, "My power could not last 
three days if I were to give the liberty of the press." 
None knew better than he the necessity for silence on 
subjects of governmental policy if that policy were de- 
signed to oppress. In such governments as he stood for 
a press censorship and the right of no man to express 
thoughts uncomplimentary to the ruler or ruling power 
are essential to the continuation of the despotism. They 
are essential to any despotism entering into the lives of 
men and are not resorted to outside of measures looking 
to such a condition. Lese-majeste is for such but not for 
a free people. When the right of criticism and discus- 
sion is denied it will always be found to apply to a state 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 177 

incompatible with freedom. When this right is denied 
it is time for the people to look into the conditions around 
which the governmental powers seek to draw the shield 
of silence for they will be found such as need exposure. 

In the clashes that occurred in the coal districts a few 
years ago, organizers of labor were enjoined from exer- 
cising the constitutionally granted right of free speech. 
The operators in these fields asserted that speeches bear- 
ing on the relations of operators to laborers and the exist- 
ing situation endangered the peace of the community. 
How far a recital of the wrongs endured by the coal miner 
would prove dangerous to the peace of the community in 
which the disturbances occurred, the operators are doubt- 
less competent to judge. A friendly and unprejudiced 
world would, on investigation of conditions, consider the 
state of labor wrong and dangerous enough in itself to 
threaten the peace without a review of the situation to 
augment the discontent. The relations of labor and cap- 
ital are not safe in any department when they will not bear 
comparisons. When a mere recital of conditions is con- 
sidered inflammatory and dangerous to peace the con- 
ditions are certainly such as to imperatively demand 
adjustment on a different basis and are sufficient in 
themselves to endanger the peace in the community where 
they exist. 

At the same time when the right of free speech was 
denied organizers several of the most active and best 
known were notified that they would be shot if found on 
the grounds of the operators. Where, even in enthralled 
Russia, in blinded Turkey, do we find stronger assumption 
of control over the lives and acts of others? It will not 
be long, others following the example of the coal opera- 
tors, that all speech warning labor of danger or urging to 
action for the betterment of the worker's condition will be 
looked upon and decided as dangerous to the peace of the 

12 



I 



178 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

community — the employer's peace. It will not be long 
with such boldness passing unchallenged that he who lifts 
the voice to call a halt in the oppressions of tyrannical 
monopoly will be deprived of liberty or life because, for- 
sooth, he has been found guilty of endangering monop- 
oly's peaceful possession and exercise of extortionate 
powers, because he has been trespassing on the grounds 
of monopoly. If the determination of free speech must be 
left to the decision of monopoly holders the people must 
bid good-bye to this, the dearest, the most unmistakable 
assurance of contitutional rights, the most undeniable of 
human rights. If they will preserve this they must abro- 
gate monopoly rights. The war is on between the two 
forces. No land is broad enough to contain the two when 
the arrogance of the usurper infringes the rights and 
questions the presence of the lawful. 

When the present operative tariff law was under dis- 
cussion in the House a member of that body was asked 
if the measure would not give several millions of dollars 
in protection to the lead trust. The man, called a repre- 
sentative of the whole people, made answer, "I don't 
know and I don't care." This is the spirit of representa- 
tion gone mad in classism. It is the don't-know, don't- 
care style of legislation in attendance on the do-know, 
do-care creative efforts at class legislation that has made 
a mock of free government in America and drilled re- 
publicanism in the line that leads back to monarchism. 
America, with our tied-up system of elections, has less 
purely representative government than forms still said 
to be monarchical. Our system of representation is 
more cumbrous, our time-lock system of office tenure 
making a change in governmental policy not easily 
effected and inducing complications that frequently result 
in the total defeat of the popular will. When a refrac- 
tory House must be reorganized through a general elec- 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 179 

tion that it may act in accordance with a satisfactory 
Senate, a waiting must be undergone. When a reform 
in the senatorial roster is necessary for progressive and 
needful legislation, another tiresome waiting must be en- 
dured. While one department of the law-making force 
is being renovated influences can be set to work on the 
prospective body that will completely vitiate any reforms 
or measures that may have been inaugurated or hoped 
for in co-operation with the other department. That 
such notorious venality should exist and hamper timely 
legislation and play the people false is almost wholly 
attributable to the system making it possible. When 
both houses of congress have been made up to suit the 
desires of the people, not infrequently an obdurate presi- 
dent will stand in despotic determination in the way of 
movement. There is no remedy for these failures to 
respond to the desires of the people but that found in a 
closer response to the immediate causes controlling elec- 
tions; whether this be possible under our existing 
method is a question. A closer surveillance of public 
servants and an immediate bringing to sharp account 
for every failure to keep faith would determine if a re- 
forming of our elective machinery be necessary to pre- 
serve freedom in government. 

At our present progression it will not lack long of the 
time when the things that stood for liberty are annulled 
in entirety ; refusal of the right of free speech on behalf 
of labor by labor organizers was a step, — to the prohibi- 
tion of petition to the Almighty in the same cause was an- 
other. With a press censorship designed for the same 
purpose Napoleon declared ; schools coming to be con- 
trolled by the money power, those beyond this control 
threatened by the first advances of suppression, and the 
inability of the honest voters to control legislation in late 
years, it would seem that the people at one time had 



180 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

taken many impertinent liberties, or that the constitution 
is being overthrown. If the people have been mistaken 
and all these are constitutional, let the work proceed; — 
some one please hand the monopolist the declaration of 
independence to light his cigar with. Another please 
hand the trust magnate the constitution, and the apolo- 
gist the fifteenth amendment for the same purpose, if this 
be representative government at its best, representative 
now too much of what the people have lost, of what their 
enemies have gained. Paper guarantee of rights is of 
small avail unless the guarantee be also written on the 
hearts of citizens. Let those who have rendered the 
constitution null and void insist on their interpretations, 
let them complete their work of entire destruction and 
the people will write a new guarantee of rights which 
cannot be misunderstood, for it will be fashioned after the 
pattern which they have in their hearts, which pattern is 
degrees in advance of our present paper guarantee of 
rights. 

The civilization we know is of degree and comparison 
only. In ultimate expansion and expression, civilization 
is a lack of the necessity for written laws. The truly 
civilized community, however remote it may be in the 
future, however ideal and hence impossible it may ap- 
pear to the scoffer, will no more find laws guarding life 
and property necessary to their preservation than the 
community of to-day finds it necessary to prevent honest 
men becoming thieve's by the passage of laws for the 
punishment of theft. Not even the moral prohibition, 
Thou shalt not steal, is necessary to the conduct of those 
governed by generous hearts. Right governs such be- 
cause it is right. So in a truly civilized state will not be 
found as a part of the governing force, man-made law 
and the outline of punishment for the violations of such 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 181 

law. Moral and legal restraints will have accomplished 
their work to the expulsion from human thought all de- 
sire to do violence to the rights of others. Right will 
rule ; but before that community is realized laws enforc- 
ing right relations of humanity must prepare the way 
for the ideal state. 

Laws are the expressed consciences of the people en- 
acting them. They do not express the conscience of the 
entire people, since it is necessary for their enforcement 
to be duly provided. When the necessity for enforce- 
ment ceases the necessity for the law ceases, as the con- 
dition it aims to secure has become a part of the life of 
the people through habit and free acceptation. Laws 
are made for the government of the minor element who 
have not accepted the higher law of right; sometimes 
they are designed for the control of those who are in 
advance of the law expression. That most laws are vio- 
lated, infringed, trampled upon in utter disregard of 
punitive provisions shows that the consciences of the 
people are inferior or superior to them, as the ruling 
motive in the violation may appear. The intelligence 
and conscience of the people are more frequently in ad- 
vance than in the rear of the laws. The work of the past 
has carried them beyond the situation aimed at. Laws 
restricting commercial rights, personal rights and laws 
of a purely moral character evincing bigotry and unwar- 
ranted interference are centuries in the rear of present 
day conditions. They have been broken from the earliest 
time in evolutionary process when men began to have 
a conscience and a knowledge of rights, when regulations 
on the idea of directing and restricting conscience and 
rights were first attempted, down to the last time the 
tariff law of this country was cheated, the last glass of 
prohibited whiskey sold, the last proscribed book trans- 
mitted by mail and the last game of ball doubly enjoyed 



182 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

on Sunday because the participants were liable to pun- 
ishment. There is a glory and a sense of triumph in 
daring to do what is believed to be not wrong, no mat- 
ter what may be the penalty. This is the strength that 
moves the world. This is the courage that gave the 
open window morning, noon and night, in defiance of 
the yawning pit where crouched lions. This the lofty 
fearlessness that dared to answer the high priest so ! 
This the truth that led men to confess their hearts' con- 
victions when silence would have kept them from the 
stake. This the joy of freedom that caused men to affix 
their names with firm hands to an immortal Declaration 
which, but for the help of a force victorious to the 
prescient eye of faith alone, would have been their own 
death warrant. Men born in the bondage of political 
servility are born free; men born in the thrall of intel- 
lectual bigotry are born kings. Men will follow their 
consciences in law or without it, according as they 
must. The laws they enact correspond to their con- 
science, but there must be a vanguard to prepare the way 
as there must be a rearguard to preserve wliat has been 
gained between the advance and the stragglers who re- 
quire close watch. While we are under necessity of 
electing men and paying them salaries to enact laws to 
govern us we are in a crude state of civilization. The 
perfected individual will in union with others of the same 
kind be attended by perfect conditions of social environ- 
ment. 

This places us a distance from ultimate civilization, 
but the way forward is not so weary as that which would 
lead us back. Remote as we may be from the goal, many 
rough places have been passed. Looking forward the 
path is lost in the ever-succeeding number of political 
obligations, social rights, moral necessities. Looking 
backward brings the consciousness of progress. There 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 183 

has been advance in the time that saw nations toiling 
under the lash of a solitary taskmaster, to the campaign 
torchlight procession; from the day of the divinity of 
kings to the Australian ballot system; from the law of 
the Mede and Persian, unalterable, to the Wilson tariff 
bill of 1894, to the Dingley effort of 1897. 

Necessity for laws has not ceased with us. Restric- 
tions securing freedom must still be made. Restrictions 
by legal enactments making impossible the weakening 
and plundering of labor secure freedom of prosperity 
to the laborer, assuring for him the same powers that the 
greater strength of capital has exercised. The rights of 
all can be guaranteed if the voters of the land so deter- 
mine and if they choose to be honest with themselves. 
Theirs is the power. 

Ballot corruption is the great evil in America to the 
eyes of some, sad enough, shameful enough to all. Cer- 
tainly no reform of moment is possible while political 
corruption exists in the body of the people, to counter- 
act, to render fruitless the efforts put forth for the cor- 
rection of evils. But the mass of citizens are not and 
never will be untrue to themselves. The removal of 
the causes that make vote-buying a decisive factor in 
campaigns will be in the obliteration of conditions that 
make the mass of people dependent for wages upon 
monopolizers of opportunities. Fancy an employer 
gathering up the assurance to notify his workers to 
vote for Blank-Blank or lose their places if those work- 
ers had the opportunity of going into a business each 
on his own responsibility or in co-operation. They 
would snap their fingers in the face of the impolitic em- 
ployer and say, "Yes, you catch us." The next morning 
there would be a new industrial community established 
in the land ; the next day there would be an employer out 
seeking workers; the next election day Blank-Blank 



184 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

would be several votes short, and the next and succeed- 
ing years the country would be in all ways much better. 
To render official corruption powerless the surest way is 
a more direct vote by all electors in the control of offices. 
Not all of a voting population can be corrupted, but 
enough can be to make the existing method of law crea- 
tion and operation abusive, to make the direction of gov- 
ernment impotent to serve the people. Not all legis- 
lators are for sale, but enough usually find their price 
to make representative government represent not the 
people but the venality of their representatives. Rep- 
resentative forms of government complex as is ours, can 
never by the very nature of their selection fully express 
the sentiments of the people they govern. 

We claim many things for our system of government 
that are beautiful and good. We have the finest theory 
of government in the world, only it does not work. We 
have clothed our theory in the garb of world-traditions 
and world-wrongs. Our ideal is far beyond us and we 
are not gaining on the distance that has hitherto sepa- 
rated us from that ideal. As a matter of actual experi- 
ence we are losing ground, receding from the ! high place 
once held. How much this loss is accidental and appar- 
ent only, to be more than recovered, how much it is 
the result of indifference and the retrogression of insuffi- 
ciency, the thought of the mass of people determines. 
In that lies safety or destruction as the well-spring of 
national vitality or the poison-pool of national deteriora- 
tion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LESSONS FROM HISTORY. 

To be well governed by a power that leaves human 
energies unfettered to pursue the arts of invention and 
production would be the ideal industrial state. To pro- 
mote the development of a complete civilization through 
the cultivation of the graces of human character would 
be conducive to human happiness of the highest order. 
But were the necessary provisions to these met, with the 
form of government and the purity and infallibility of 
an administrative power secured in a satisfactory assur- 
ance of justice to all governed, this would not discharge 
the ethical responsibilities and meet the needs involved. 
A higher duty than that of being governed is imposed. 
Self-government in nations is a part of the plan of civili- 
zation as truly as self-government in the individual is a 
part of the discipline in character-building. Self-gov- 
ernment is a school in the highest human development, 
no less undeniably and no less emphatically than the 
more material forces that contribute a superficially more 
apparent advancement and prosperity of the race. That 
this is true appears no less plainly in reason than in his- 
tory, for the more enlightened, the more civilized, a 
nation becomes, the more do the customs of government 
and individual responsibilities in the exercise of political 
power gravitate toward democracy. Our task and the 
work of those who succeed us is a continuation of the 
labors of the generations of the ages. It is the adjustment 
to the truest basis the times will permit, and the main- 
tenance there of the equal social and political relation- 



186 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

ship of the family of mankind ; to work out the political 
and social salvation of America and promote the same 
conditions in the nations of the world. 

No democracy, however crude and subject to apparent 
inconsistencies, is incompetent to meet the needs of the 
people constituting- it. The iron-bound, unyielding sway 
of monarchy has in the past been parent to the wars and 
crimes that blot the pages of history. When a people 
are ready for advancement and struggle to throw off 
old crudities and falsities, and the government under 
which they act forbids the changes to progress, the forces 
of advancement finally grow beyond the strength of 
tyrannous restrictions. Old forms and customs are 
forcibly cast off and the broader life enters to serve un- 
til it, too, by progress of the people, or by abuses of pro- 
visions, grows too much cramped to be longer adequate 
to the new occasions that spring up and develop with the 
march of time. An elastic form of government that 
yields to the demands of an increasing understanding 
of 'human rights and destinies calls for no ruptures of 
governmental forms, no tiger ferocities, no pillaging 
brutalities to sicken the world. Constitutional democ- 
racy vesting in the people governed all power over all 
political and social conditions and causes makes the 
progress of racial evolution an easy stepping to higher 
planes of social order as the people come to occupy higher 
planes of thought. New conditions of thought and in- 
creased consciousness of right and duty under such 
conditions cause peoples to grow into new social orders 
with the serenity and naturalness the new shoot embod- 
ied in the old branch of the tree reaches out into visible 
life through the impelling and compelling forces of 
spring airs and rains and suns. Life in nature and in 
intellectual states must manifest itself. Repression and 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 187 

attempts at thwarting development result in distortion 
and ruptures unpleasant to look upon and experience. 

The warfare between liberty and oppression is intro- 
duced to the attention of the reader on the first page of 
authentic history ; its tradition runs yet far more remote. 
The first battle, continued through ages, secured to the 
race the form and partial semblance of democracy. This 
success was won on many a fiercely contested field where 
the foe to progress and the martyr to liberty mingled 
their blood and lay down in death to share a common 
burial. The second battle was engaged before a truce 
to the first could be declared, and still continues. En- 
gaged in it on one side are the foes to human liberty and 
progress who seek a retrogression into the forms and 
practices of monarchy. On the other side are found 
those who look for a higher development for the race, 
whose faces are lifted to the light of the new day even 
now reddening to a dawn. The promise of the better 
day is not in the conditions now obtaining; it is in the 
awakening of the world to the knowledge of what con- 
stitutes the rights of the God-gift, life. The battle may 
be long, but the result cannot be doubtful. Right does 
not make might, it is might. If right be not might, then 
progress is not right, for every step in the upward way 
has been a struggle. The contest to-day grows toward 
a crisis as the forces entering into it attack and repel each 
other with a determination born of necessity. The world 
is not shocked with the din and clamor of their feats. 
But rarely do the ironclad, the torpedo, the rapid-firing 
gun, the numberless devices of man against the life of 
man, speak in the warfare. They are for the greater part 
silent in this battle, which is fought mainly in the hearts 
and minds of men. 

Away back in the dim ages of antiquity existed the 
same causes of contention that to-day perplex the social 



188 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

humanitarian. The same struggle for evil power over 
the mass of then living men, characterized by greater 
success than now, marked the primeval relationship of 
governing and governed, powerful and weak, at the 
dawn of history's day and has continued down to the 
present time, still engaging the race. The struggle of 
humanity has been of slow movement, the cause of hu- 
manity of slow recognition and growth. Centuries were 
consumed in wresting from despots a part of the power 
they exercised, this divided power to be parceled out to 
other and under-despots to the hurt and humiliation of 
the great body of people. Centuries were again worn 
away in the effort to extend the power of government 
through successive steps to all classes governed, the only 
power of government in right and reason. Even yet 
this power is but imperfectly recognized, and in only one 
country of the globe — Switzerland — is it applied to a full 
degree of recognition of the sovereign power of humanity 
over human action in political and governmental mat- 
ters. 

Any nation of the past could have worked out the 
plan of civilization and set the standard for the world 
had not the love of right proven weaker than the ten- 
dencies to despotism, and greed checked efforts in that 
direction. These tendencies further empowered for evil 
by the acquiescence of self-indulgent indifference on the 
part of the popular body enthralled the world. But 
power and stability have no lasting basis in tyranny, and 
the downfall of nations founded on this basis was and is 
inevitable. Both power and continuation must yield, did 
yield, finally, to the lapse of years concentrating the dis- 
integrating influences that wore out the endurance of 
the generations of oppressed ; that sickened and decayed 
the ruling strength through years and generations of 
passion unbridled and the consuming forces that eat out 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 189 

the life of unchecked and ungoverned intoleration. So 
nation succeeded nation, now here, now there the seat 
of brute force that characterized the domination of 
ancient governments. The world is too small for more 
than one body of people to long maintain a high degree 
of power when power is measured by a brutal disregard 
of the rights of humanity. Tribe preyed upon tribe, 
nation upon nation, kings and people upon kings and 
people, until the rising power having reached the zenith 
of barbaric glory and strength, began to shine less 
fiercely; until gradually or suddenly the little one that 
unnoticed and contemptuously disregarded had become a 
mighty nation, a specter of fright in the path of despolia- 
tion; until the growing power arose in the irresistible 
strength of a newer and comparatively holier life and 
hurled the older and more corrupt one from the throne 
of world supremacy. Until less than two thousand 
years ago this was the universal order of march by the 
race. 

The factor in mental development called religion im- 
presses its power more thoroughly on the national life 
than any other force in the time of the individual, more 
indelibly than any other force in the national existence. 
The religion of Egypt was a pacific one, hence Egypt 
was rarely warlike except in defense. The religion of 
the Hebrew was offensive for the gaining of wealth, so 
the ancient Jew spared not child or woman in the pur- 
suit of his ideal. The religion of Mohammed enjoins 
salvation at the sword's point, therefore the death of an 
infidel is as dear to the Moslem heart as the conversion 
of one. The gentle teachings of the Indian sages incul- 
cate the spirit of self-sacrifice, and Brahmins will starve 
their bodies to death that they may feed a passing beg- 
gar. India endures oppression because the national re- 
ligion is one of peace; Turkey slays inoffensive subjects 



190 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

because the national religion is one of blood. So has 
it been always, the life of the state portraying its religion ; 
so will it be always, the religion of the state predicting 
the national policy, internal and external. So has it 
been by the teachings of the Nazarene. When the doc- 
trine of equal rights was first promulgated on the Mount, 
the people wondered at the words of the teacher who 
taught as one having authority and not as the scribes 
who enjoined obedience to the narrow Levitical orders. 
To the Jew this doctrine was as new and strange as it 
was to the greater part of the race. But the doctrine 
being founded on truth survived the trials to which its 
adherents were subjected. It spread, for truth is not 
stagnant. Finally, when these teachings had con- 
sciously or unconsciously impregnated to a degree the 
closed mind of the race, justice gained a partial recog- 
nition and power was parceled out and many grew to 
share the difficulties and divide the spoils of government. 
Then, too, was inaugurated the sharing of blessings. 
When one nation discovered and laid down a truth of 
government, however obscure the apprehension and mis- 
applied in execution, another nation took it up to build 
upon it somewhat, to cut off an incongruity here, to fos- 
ter a truth there. It was the slow growth of the coral 
reef, for many years hidden from the thought and visible 
knowledge of man, mounting through obstacles labori- 
ously but with the infinite grace of patience up through 
the waters of blindness and horrible oppression and 
numberless mistakes, until the first faint rim looked 
smilingly up through the gloom surrounding the divine 
rights of kings, to the clear light heralding the diviner 
rights of man. 

With the growth of the recognition of human equality 
has grown stability of governments and toleration in all 
realms of human activities until we now see the admin- 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 191 

istrations of governmental duties discharged by kings, 
queens, presidents, and even directly by the people them- 
selves. Heads of monarchies exercise but little control, 
and all governments in the world of civilization have 
become that of executives assisted by cabinets, councils, 
and the people they stand for, with a growth toward the 
completer control by the whole people in direct govern- 
ment. Nations no longer prey upon nations. Nations 
scarcely permit the strong of nations to prey upon the 
weak. The growth of justice and liberty in the hearts 
of men and in the policies of nations is sure, although 
suffering seeming interruptions and reverses in late years. 
While it is happily true that states generally exercise for- 
bearance toward one another, the worm that dieth not, 
nor ceaseth to eat at the vitals of civilization, continues 
to threaten. Greed, unequal distribution, oppression, 
are as industrious in seeking control, are as insidious in 
action, and are as fatal to liberty as in the ages that saw 
the downfall and extinction of great empires through the 
unrestrained sway of these factors of death. 

It took the Roman empire a matter of ten centuries to 
yield to internal decay, the germs of that decay being in- 
corporated in the state policy with the spirit that gave ab- 
solute power over the lives of others. From the founda- 
tion of the greatest city in the political history of the 
world the struggle continued until right, trampled upon 
from the first and ascendant for a short time only, sought 
other fields for exemplification and the Eternal City was 
abandoned to the fate which she could not avoid as a con- 
sequence of her practices. It was not political inequalities 
that conduced in the main to that downfall. Political in- 
equalities alone never destroyed a nation. They only point 
the way to danger. The strongest agencies of that over- 
throw ;were the subtle influences that set more actively to 



192 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

work when the classes had gained that state of political 
equality for which they had contended with varying for- 
tunes through generations and centuries, the path to which 
was marked by milestones stained in the blood of Roman 
patriots. Liberty was gained through martyrdom and 
lost through indifference. When many victories had been 
gained and Rome and the Roman world unitedly set out 
on that career of conquest that records the most brilliant 
exploits in the annals of war and which resulted in plac- 
ing Rome upon a foundation that looked defiant of time 
itself, the enemies within, stronger than those without, 
succeeded where the former failed. Then the silent ene- 
mies of nations, more to be dreaded and guarded against 
than the shouting hosts of frantic men armed and de- 
termined, those enemies that have brought to desolation 
the flowers of kingdoms overthrew the work of centuries 
and Rome went down, a monument to her own folly and 
negligence. While the people, feeling secure in the broad 
political freedom that had been reached, sought for in- 
creased extension of territory and political power, the 
legislation that centers the financial interests and property 
rights in a few had been industriously at work and before 
the Roman citizen knew his danger his position changed 
from that of a free citizen to one of servitude and degra- 
dation fatal to the life of the nation. While Romans 
guarded their rights at home no less jealously than they 
looked after them abroad, prosperity made her home 
among the seven hills and reached out full hands to all 
who shared Roman citizenship. When Romans slept, 
leaving enemies to guard the hard-earned treasure of 
measurable equality, the valor of Rome was vanquished 
with the destruction of that equality and the citizen awoke 
to find the land seized, wealth concentrated and wrested 
from him the political power which had in times past 
served as a check on tyranny. Then the citizenry sunk to 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 193 

that death state of apathy in which service to a native or 
foreign master signified but their lethargic insufficiency 
to right their many wrongs. The fires of patriotism had 
burned out to a lifeless ash and there was not left fuel to 
feed upon even had a master hand applied the torch and 
sought to coax a flame. So on the world stage was drawn 
the curtain against the Roman play. 

The greater consumes the less in all societies where 
tendencies go to augment the great and decrease the 
strength of the less. Effete patricianism coupled with 
aggressive millionairism subtly encroached upon and 
eventually consumed vigorous, preserving plebeianism and 
Rome gave way to a superior force in the national series. 
A better civilization succeeded the Roman, but Rome 
could have done the work required in social evolution had 
Roman integrity been superior to the disintegrating forces 
of luxurious sense. It is too early to say that our later 
civilization exists and progresses under essentially dif- 
ferent conditions to superior results. Self-government 
to the completeness with which we witness and experi- 
ence it is a safeguard never before employed. Coupled 
with the individualism that pervades the political ideas 
of our better nations this is a strong power for the preser- 
vation of states. But forms of government and political 
rights count for nothing unless the saving forces of love 
of liberty and right be nourished and maintained. If the 
poisons of selfishness, indifference and unresisted en- 
croachments by private powers are given place to, it will 
fare with later as with earlier peoples. 

Greece, the beautiful and artistic, whose deeds of valor 
in defense of country and for the liberty she prized still 
thrill the hearts of patriots, yielded to the same forces that 
later undermined the strength of her mighty rival. When 
the love of luxury and power crushed out of the hearts 
of leaders and people the love of country and brothers, 
13 



194 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

when jealousies gendered by greed had worked out their 
inevitable results, the Greece of culture and once of patri- 
otism succumbed. 

Comparisons and citations of special instances tell no 
more than any other example which might be taken. Re- 
public, kingdom, empire, despotism, went down to a like 
grave for like causes. What is true of Rome and Greece 
is true of all nations and civilizations of the past, their 
birth, growth, prime, decay, in matters of causation, in 
process, the same. A doubtful beginning, a struggling, 
stormy youth, a maturity indifferent to internal oppres- 
sions and a decline of gradual increase until a day of start- 
ling suddenness of meaning calls for a reckoning of ac- 
counts. These two nations did more to perpetuate their 
own memories than other nations approaching or ex- 
ceeding them in magnitude of territory or absoluteness of 
dominion, because in the days of their wisdom they in- 
stituted and practiced many forms of political and social 
justice. The practice of their virtues carries with it the 
warning against their sins. The beginning, growth and 
approach to prime of strong nations existing to-day have 
not deviated in the least essential from those stages in the 
progress of states in the past. The rigors were mitigated 
somewhat, but the features remain. Their fate will be 
repeated in the repetition of their mistakes. It is inevi- 
table. Unless the nations that now are seek out and apply 
a remedy for the disorders that brought death to nations 
that once were, they must likewise miserably perish. A 
few have found out remedies, or seeming remedies, and 
applied them with a heroism terrible in its intensity, and 
cleansing, preserving for the time, in results. But vigi- 
lance, vigilance, must be the watchword. Other remedies 
have been applied than those that seem so drastic, these 
with good results likewise. But there is as yet no anti- 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 195 

dote discovered sufficient in saving strength to counter- 
act the slow poison of negligence. 

The world has affected to shudder at a Reign of Terror 
lasting a short time and sacrificing, horribly enough, it 
looks, a few thousand lives to the accomplishment of a 
great good. The same world placidly beholds the Reign 
of Error that continues to rule, that has crushed out mil- 
lions of lives, strangled millions of manly souls and im- 
peded the onward march of the race with barriers of foully 
murdered, starved, beaten, trampled bodies of human 
kind. We have trembled, we shrink at the lightning's 
instantaneous flash that carries death, but with death 
purification. We calmly abide the work of the poisonous 
gas that subtly benumbs and chokes, adding horror to 
horror, death to death. 

The growth of governments has been steadily away 
from monarchy to self-rule even in those countries where 
hereditary rulers still figure as a part of the governmental 
machinery. Enlightenment accompanies freedom and 
truth demands but a champion in all ages and a following 
of brave hearts. Truth is invincible at last though meet- 
ing many seeming defeats, and though cloaked in error 
for a time, will in some fairer day stand disclosed to all 
truth worshipers. When error stands so close to truth 
that the two seem to blend in nature the mixed truth must 
give way, ultimately to a more complete truth and error 
be finally banished. With an Abd-ur-Rahman represent- 
ing a dimly recognized truth and a Charles Martel stand- 
ing for the fuller truth of a more clearly revealed God, 
Moslemism was crushed out in Europe, is to be crushed 
out ultimately to make way for a greater than Moslemism 
with its half-blind idolatry, its heartlessness, its salvation 
by bloodshed. What other sacrifices, of nations, religions, 
forms and lives, the progress of humanity will demand the 
future will reveal. Nations and lives can be preserved 



196 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

through conformity to the demands made for progress. 
The others, until the full truth is grasped, must go now 
and in the future as in the past. The order is inexorable. 
Despotism gave way to modified monarchy, monarchy 
gives way to republicanism, republicanism to limited de- 
mocracy, limited democracy to self-government in its full- 
ness. The less, the partial truths giving way, ultimately, 
though in hindered march and with many reverses, to the 
fuller and more complete truths. History has written it 
so. The heart of man demands it so. The laws of God 
have established it so. 

That corruption and disease are working in the political 
and social organism of our nation we cannot fail to see. 
He who shuts his eyes to their presence, seeking no 
change, is like an ulcerous man who wraps his clothing 
over his sores and says : "I am a whole man and there is 
no unsoundness in me," — and takes no thought for the 
healing of his body while the lusterless eye and not-to-be- 
hidden pallor of countenance tell plainly to the world of 
the hidden decay that saps the strength he boasts. We are 
not, in many desirable ways what we were, nor are we 
what we should be. The state of our industries and the 
conditions governing distribution, the two gauges of a 
country's economic prosperity, are an unsparing condem- 
nation of our policy. Conditions of inequality was the 
mistake of the past. It is the mistake of the present. 

The world has not witnessed before the opportunity 
of America, the golden opportunity of settling in just and 
practicable way the time-old question of human power 
over and in connection with the rights of humanity. Per- 
haps it will not witness in the future as it has certainly 
not witnessed in the past, a parallel to the rapidity with 
which we have fallen away from the high standard of 
human rights, once having so clear a conception of the 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 197 

relation of these rights to just, and therefore stable forms 
of government. Nor has the world's history recorded a 
like concentration of wealth and power or force of class- 
ism in so short a time. 

The wayfaring man, be he as great a fool as he pleases, 
should be able to read the signs of the times if he will 
but earnestly and honestly set himself to do it, so plainly 
do they stare us in the face. He who reads them not, be 
he fool or otherwise, he who reads them wrongly, or read- 
ing them for their true worth would give them other than 
their due weight of consideration, comprehending them 
and their import would for any motive dare to complicate 
the disorders they evidence by not most earnestly en- 
deavoring to help untangle the vexed skein, is an enemy to 
the common good. Strikes, riots and starvations, — a brief 
but comprehensive record of our industrial progress and 
state of late years. This not because the human heart is 
inherently wicked and humanity slothful and indifferent 
to the obligations of nature, but because the fear of want 
makes pretexts for plunderings and oppression, and be- 
cause men have not yet learned to guard their rights. 
Not that labor whose aim is the fashioning of wealth 
forms loves their destruction and hindrance, but that many 
things grievous to be borne are presented with all the 
respectability of truth that are no-truths and falseness 
within and without. 

It is growing beyond the point of endurance by a class 
of laborers educated. as the American laborer has been. 
It has grown beyond what should be the point of endur- 
ance with any class of laborers. The social standing of 
the workers, governed by their political and economic 
importance, is the surest criterion of national stability and 
soundness. When that standing sinks to a lower level 
as ours has and is still doing, when labor declines into the 
realm of servitude where there is no compensation but 



198 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

that granting the barest subsistence, society should de- 
mand a fairer adjustment of economic forces. Society 
may determine such laws to govern the productive indus- 
tries as will enable workers to present to the world an ap- 
pearance of dignified freemen, a condition essential to the 
prosperity and endurance of the state. Labor groveling 
in hunger, half-clothed, creatures of forbearance and 
charity, belong to the past, yet to-day we find the class 
much poorer in relative wealth possession than was the 
class hundreds of years ago, less valued than in the past. 
Then human kind in the humble walks were cherished as 
a necessary part of the social organism. Then human 
labor was valuable and consequential because it was the 
only kind obtainable and the hirer must needs hire men ; 
now machinery does the work and the employer buys 
machines and men are cast out in numbers as cumbrous 
clogs to the wheels of industrial progress. 

We must reform our industrial system. If we do not 
it will reform itself, and Heaven save us from such neces- 
sity, from such a reformation as that may be. A suffer- 
ing and unreckoning class, feeling somehow and some- 
where they are being done an injustice, and without con- 
sidering circumstances and causes of existing evils or the 
reasonable and legitimate way of redress, have, very often, 
only one idea of redress after protest has failed. The 
wronged workers of America have protested, not once, 
but many times. The protests may not have been of the 
most discreet and exemplary forms, as has been charged. 
Hunger and desperation often lack discretion and exem- 
plary patience. That matters not in the true consideration 
of this form of grievance. Enough that the protests have 
been submitted, one memorable one at Homestead, another 
memorable, too, at Chicago, another yet more memorable 
in many ways, in the coal fields in '97. Enough; more 
than enough that the protests having been duly submitted 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 199 

should be treated with indifference and scorn, execration. 
They protested the best they knew, forcibly and earnestly. 
Yea, with deadly and long-to-be remembered force and 
earnestness. Greater earnestness can no man show than 
that which causes him to lay down his life for a principle. 
Those demonstrations being happily passed, and because 
the sky is clear above and the air zephyr-like in soft assur- 
ance of safety, fancy not that the little clouds skulking 
on the horizon are at play. There are the powers of de- 
struction and death, often, in clouds as innocent. When 
they rush together and cleave fast in a union of mad dis- 
cords, look to your storm caves for the high will be made 
low, and what does not bend must break. When earth 
severs the bonds that unite and draw heavenward, rush- 
ing hellward, and mingles the elements of determination 
with the elements of fury, sobs and curses blend in the 
composition of their sphere music. Out of this union 
proceeds a new creation, but oh, soul of man misguided 
and bruised, what pains of nature attend the birth. 

Another protest, known as the French Revolution, oc- 
curred a century ago. It started from less immediate 
cause than did the Chicago riot. The French started out 
to reform a state of affairs they had every reason to fear 
would grow worse as that had been the direction of affairs 
in their land for many years. They accomplished their 
reform as the w T orld knows and as certain Frenchmen who 
needed reforming experienced at the time. The methods 
of the reformers, though criticised, show two things — 
what men can do and what they will do if wrong prove 
too stubborn to yield to less earnestness. The working- 
men at Chicago sought a change in a business condition 
they felt to be longer insupportable. Looking at the 
provocation of the workers and contrasting it with the 
spirit manifested by their opposers, the most remarkable 
feature of that complication is that a reign of terror did 



200 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

not grow out of it. The spirit of revolution and rebellion 
against manifest wrongs was never more justified than 
there. This spirit was not composed into apparent sub- 
jection wholly, nor in great part, through fear and respect 
of the forces of government invoked. Desperate men are 
not calmed so. Other power than show of military 
strength quelled and helped to quell that memorable pro- 
test. The surest and most potent influence over the ac- 
tions of great classes is their consciousness of strength 
to correct wrongs. When the time for an actual test ar- 
rives they do not shrink the trial nor fear the outcome. 

Submission is not the word for the day. In former 
days this was the teaching to the under classes. Usually 
the elementary lesson was presented in the hangman's 
noose or headsman's ax. But the pupil sometimes proved 
so apt and took the lesson so well to heart that he reversed 
the application and turned tutor to his masters who in 
turn were made to accept the disagreeable fact that unre- 
stricted power carries liberty that amounts to license. The 
workingmen in most countries to-day, and particularly in 
America, have no such lessons to repudiate, their class of 
earlier times having done the pioneer work in this line 
for them. The idea of individual worth instilled into their 
minds through many agencies gives them a point of vant- 
age that places them immeasurably in advance of their 
class in the not yet remote past. Again, of this, can it be 
said to be peculiarly true of the American worker whose 
teaching of a hundred years and more has been to this end. 
His ancestors came to the wilderness and subjugated it 
for this purpose. If they came not so, they came by invi- 
tation after the greatest victory for independence in all 
social rights had been won, or he himself came in this 
way. These teachings of more than a hundred years, 
borne in upon the American mind by inheritance and 
assurance, proclaiming the rights divine of the King Man 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 201 

to a voice in all affairs in which he is concerned and his 
immeasurable value as one indispensable unit in a great 
whole have been well taken to heart. This is no small 
item in the general account when its effects on the national 
mind are considered. It is one that must be entered, for 
it is well grasped to be well expounded and acted upon 
by this king when the times demand. Those who teach 
equality and practice oppression should heed this. They 
cannot afford to affect surprise if the people materialize 
the claims ever insisted upon for them. 

We may think many of the demonstrations and upris- 
ings of labor unwarranted; some even profess to do so 
at all times. It is not without its parallel. King John 
considered the demands of his barons as altogether un- 
warranted and an offense to his kingly prerogative to 
oppress and rob, and his royal feelings were much out- 
raged by his forced surrender, if there be truth in history. 
In like manner when the English commons began to 
clamor for recognition all who had been in authority over 
them felt aggrieved. So however it may be viewed it 
must be known that the demonstrations of labor represent 
and in a manner express labor's views, let those get com- 
fort from this who may, those take warning who must. 
That many of the movements for a better relation appear 
at the present to be fruitless should neither discourage 
the one nor encourage the other. The records of past 
agitations show reverses as well as victories in all fields 
of progress. The gains of the present are not for us 
alone. We build for the future more than we do for the 
now ; we enjoy the crudities our ideas realize for us, but 
the future will experience the completer realization of the 
good they are meant to convey. What the influence of 
agitations now being carried on will exercise in the future 
relations of labor and capital, of labor and distribution, 
cannot now be told. Certainly it will be beneficial to a de- 



202 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

gree. The English commons knew not the magnitude of 
the victory they had won. At the time none saw that the 
concessions they gained would bring forth the freer politi- 
cal life as expressed in modern representation. 

Years before the Bastile fell and years before the 
French people had ceased to hail a Louis as the savior 
and regenerator of France an eminent observer from a 
foreign land wrote that there were to be seen throughout 
the land of the Frank all the symptoms of a revolution 
that history had evidenced in times and nations of the 
past. The oppressions, extortions, on the part of those 
in power, the restlessness and sullenness of the masses 
spoke audible prophecy to the earnest listening ear, but the 
tones were unheeded by those grown stupid through ex- 
cess of plunder and gross through drunkenness of class- 
ism. When that thunderbolt shot through the depths 
of a clear and seemingly calm sky it carried echoes to the 
remotest places of civilized man. The foundations of 
political institutions were shaken by its force and thrones 
of kings and tyrants in all realms of social life shook with 
those prolonged reverberations. That event is not 
altogether of the past, nor are its blessings to be lost sight 
of in a contemplation of its horrors. The inflammable 
Frenchman is scarcely more tow-like than the cosmopoli- 
tan American. From the nature of tradition and relative 
conditions the provocation in France a hundred years 
ago was not so great as in this land to-day. Frenchmen 
were hanged when they dared petition, but French society 
was founded on the basis that made the heads of offenders 
to play at nine pins in the game of royalty. Americans 
have been hanged for talking under a constitution that 
guarantees the right of free speech. Those sharing 
American protection have been shot for marching, under 
the same charter that also guarantees the right of peace- 
able assembly. There are signs in abundance in this land 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 203 

now and parallels with past social conditions and agita- 
tions strong enough to engage the thought of even the 
apologist. 

He who oppresses the hireling in his wages is in no 
land without his defenders. Laws, the operation of which 
give to monopolization the substance of labor always 
commands apologists. But there is one class of Ameri- 
can economists that is perplexing, seeming to be purely 
a product of American institutions. To maintain that 
as tax collections argue the ability to pay taxes, therefore 
high tax rates show a prosperous economic state is a 
unique position for any body of people to take. To hold 
that inasmuch as we are more fortunate than some we 
should at once proceed to grow less fortunate in order to 
demonstrate our good fortune shows to what extremity 
the apologists will be pushed in defense of a wrong order. 
Will the class permit an appeal in Reason's name? If so, 
in this same name, why should not American labor be 
better conditioned than old-world labor? The ingenuity 
of the defender and the apologist cannot show a valid 
reason why it should be otherwise. America, the oppor- 
tunity of the ages and the land which in the fullness of 
time came forth to satisfy the demands of human kind — 
demands for better political, physical and moral condi- 
tions — that any should have been able to discern even the 
trace of a parallel and comparison is both humiliating and 
disgraceful to us. Old-world society, church-ridden, gov- 
ernment-ridden, ignorance-ridden, — and yet the apologist 
informs us, that, wonderful to say, America is not so badly 
conditioned as is the old world, and therefore not so 
badly as it is possible to be. And the defender, not to be 
outdone, solemnly assures us that unless we accept old- 
world orders and middle-age barbarisms we shall arrive 



204 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

at the same point these systems have brought the old 
world to. 

What a dreary lot of comforters such are. It is a sad 
doctrine, that which teaches that nations must have their 
beggar foundations down deep in the mire of human 
misery on which to build society. It is a doctrine of lies 
as well. It is a hell's doctrine that will reduce all who 
accept it to the state from which it originates. The de- 
fender and apologist more lament our prosperity and op- 
portunity for success than our lack of either. It is in the 
nature of such comforters. If we could only rid ourselves 
of them, if occasion for them would grow less, or be made 
to grow less, happy would it be for us. 

If the observer contents and consoles himself by saying 
there are no causes but in imaginary wrongs for the 
demonstrations late years have shown and which are un- 
paralleled in our history, he must know that even this 
view presents no remedy for the trouble. How much 
of real, how much of imaginary wrongs there must be 
in an order that condemns many people to hopeless, dead- 
ening destitution to create millions in the control of one, 
let him not say if he wishes to be consistent. There will 
ever be found fish-wives to rail at the wrigglings of the 
eel which is being skinned, striking it on the head and 
crying "down." As well there will ever be those who say, 
"The public be damned." Only, men do not wrestle and 
fight and lay down their lives and lives' hopes for an 
imagination. The heart of man is not deceived so much 
as that. With those who look and work for a better day 
for all, the wrongs they seek to abolish are very real. To 
those who never felt the hurt of injustice its pains are 
purely imaginary, but they who have suffered know the 
beginning and end with equal distinctness. Mankind are 
judges between the real and the imaginary. It is the 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 205 

i 

reality of justice toward which they advance with 
struggling efforts in all generations. 

As wage payers, the impression made on capital by the 
turmoils engrossing universal attention has been that of 
neither intimidation nor softening. Monopoly-capital 
was never more aggressive. If the burdens ease a little 
occasionally it is not because the taskmasters have been 
moved by fear or pity, but because a victory has been won 
in part, although bitterly contested by the enemy to equal 
prosperity. These small triumphs are of briefest duration 
and the business world soon swings back to the path so 
well beaten by the ages of travel therein. Then other shifts 
are made and other burdens are imposed and other com- 
plications encountered until the partial revivals of indus- 
try are again checked by a situation unforeseen and to be 
overcome only by resorting to other shifts imposing other 
checks. Stimulations of production entail limitations of 
consumption, restrictions follow after liberties in an end- 
less succession. It will be so while distribution suffers 
the impediments imposed by a false system of rewards. 
Capital is more blameless than the system entailing the 
irregularities. 

Half-way measures result in partial victories which do 
not continue. Many of the partial victories won seem now 
to be reversed and consuming classism appears stronger 
than ever. The powers established for the preservation 
of the rights of all seem to have developed into agencies 
for the further oppression of the weak. It is well that 
it is so, for partial victories too often give a feeling of 
security that is false in every particular. The ultimate 
victory of the people must be comprehensive of rights 
long held in abeyance and never fully recognized ; it must 
likewise observe equalities which are now recognized in 
theory alone. Partial victories do not last in beneficence. 



206 THE LABORER AETD HIS HIRE 

x\pplied in the industrial world they are inadequate to 
maintain the existent rate of division in profits between the 
power of capital and the weakness of labor. They are 
utterly impotent to meet the demands of our constantly 
increasing needs. Good in themselves, they are not suffi- 
cient for a day as relief for the conditions they are meant 
to improve. Half-way measures are only outposts, which 
if relied upon solely, soon are more than recovered by the 
opposition. Unless progress be made ahead, when the 
added needs of a growing population and changing con- 
ditions crowd wages and opportunities down to the old 
dead-level that marks the danger line, another shift must 
be made or worse stagnation, worse discontent follows, 
because our demands are greater. 

If relief does not come in the line of straightforward 
progress it will come some other way. Any way will be 
victory so the shackles that bind labor are loosed, but 
there are victories that nations must weep over, — and 
are at that better than no victories. Men will endure 
much and suffer the absence of many things which they 
should possess, but they cannot starve when food is to be 
had. They will not do so, nor is it right for them to do 
so; they will starve only when food ceases or when the 
power to get or create it ceases. They may starve them- 
selves and children for a while, but not always. So, too, 
will they proceed in the control of other things quite as 
essential as bread. The world has seen bread riots and 
political riots that got for the rioters bread in the first and 
recognized rights in the second instances. It has seen 
revolutions that it now reaps benefits from, even though 
the cost was seemingly great at the time. Past conditions 
suited to past needs are too limited for the present and 
much more limited for the future state of the race. Out- 
grown customs and orders must give way, peacefully or 



LESSONS FROM HISTORY 207 

otherwise, to the new ones adapted to the new and increas- 
ing needs. 

The future is the hope of the philanthropist in all fields, 
and a better hope, better opportunities, better life are held 
in fulfillment of the promise of coming years. Not then 
will it be so hard as impossible for strength and intel- 
ligence to win a decent living, which it is now sometimes 
and somewheres. In that bright age lives will not be 
cramped to build up a wealth power. Not then as now will 
venal congressmen and bargain-counter senators bicker 
for personal favors in legislative proceedings while the 
business interests of the country stand stagnant from their 
indecision. No; what legislatures and congresses will do 
in that golden era will be the work they were appointed 
to do. Then disproportionate strength will not be dele- 
gated to any class of people and the disproportionate 
results we now experience will have no part in the wis- 
dom-ruled society. 

We say this is a goodly land to live in. True; much 
better than many to be named. Perhaps the best in the 
world in some respects. Yet this is no reason why it 
should not be better still, the very best it is possible to be 
made, which it is not now. It is not enough that we can 
say we are better conditioned than others while that better 
is not the best it can be made. If the masters of industrial 
opportunities and those who make conditions governing 
all classes could come to know that the highest interests 
of one class are identical with those of all others and de- 
pendent on them, that all interests of a single individual 
are identical with the same interests of all humanity, we 
might be saved much that does not work direct good. The 
economic interests of employer and employe for a single 
generation appear to be in direct opposition as the world 
divides profits, but the lower must be subordinated to the 



208 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

higher, and there is a higher for all than only profits. 
It is a lesson worth long striving and earnest teaching. 
It must be learned some day, and the community of inter- 
ests, prosperity and power be recognized and established 
or our country come to have her name written on that 
page of history whose title is Anarchy. 



. CHAPTER IX. 

REMEDIES. 

There is small hope of temporary relief and no hope for 
permanent lightening of labor's overburdens in the com- 
monly proposed remedies. Conservative and half-meas- 
ure demands have met with but slightly qualified failure. 
Their record condemns them as unfit, mere shifts result- 
ing in no visible gain. Compromises and forced relations 
as age qualifications, time qualifications, regulated wages 
and the like have gained but little for those in whose be- 
half their agitation was begun and continues. This little is 
negative rather than positive, consisting in a slight staying 
of the downward tendency of wages more than in an in- 
crease of reward to labor. Their efficacy must be con- 
jectured since it cannot be proven nor disproven. We 
know the general condition of labor to be sinking to a 
lower level. How much the efforts put forth to stay this 
fall may have retarded or lessened the decline cannot be 
said ; just where labor would have been by this time with- 
out these efforts cannot be known. At the best that can be 
said for them they have not preserved the relative stand- 
ing, they have not accomplished justice between the two 
economic classes. Since they have failed in this, the vital 
aim of all such efforts, they must lack a vital principle, 
classing them with half-ways, dangerously deceptive to 
those who trust in them. Holding out a promise of much 
that cannot be gained through their agency and being less 
than they seem to be they are doomed by the very order 
of nature and their own insufficiency to complete and not 
distant abandonment. 

14 



210 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Strikes are finally impotent. All attempts to force 
capital have failed. A minor and temporary advantage 
may at times appear gained, but the press of narrowing 
opportunities augmented by competition in labor soon 
renders these slight advantages void. The unhealthful- 
ness and unnaturalness of strife between the capitalistic 
and labor factions are sure destroyers of their highest 
good. Harmony must prevail if the best interests of 
both are regarded, but harmony and prosperity will not 
follow present relations. They have not attended the past, 
therefore they will not be present in the future unless re- 
lations ever begetting inharmony be set aside. Acquies- 
cence in prevailing orders will not bring harmony, for in 
the face of strongest protest and most determined effort 
to preserve the rights of the weak, injustice perseveres. 
Acquiescing with prevailing conditions is therefore 
dangerous. The wisdom of the world demands a change 
in ithe orders that entail discontent. 

By strikes, which have been a favorite weapon of labor 
in the past, usually little is gained and much lost by the 
strikers. The loss in production and productive force is 
lamentably great. This loss, from the nature of the 
economic relations existing between the two industrial 
classes is a service to labor in the absorption of forms of 
production already in the manufactory, warehouse or 
shop. After this reserve is lessened and reduced to a 
mark where production will be more profitable, capital 
is ready to concede a part of the demands of labor so that 
production may again proceed. If labor, before this point 
in consumption is reached, be not starved into submission, 
capital in its power of resistance and labor in its weak- 
ness to hold out may meet in some form of compromise 
and work resumes. The actual loss to labor is infinite in 
relation to strength. The actual loss to capital is finite in 
comparison with strength. The loss of labor is bread, 



REMEDIES 211 

of capital profits. Never is the loss of the latter more 
than temporary, to be more than recovered, usually. The 
loss of the first may be and frequently is permanent in the 
plant where the laborer has been so bold as to refuse 
capital's terms. 

The gain of strikes as means of adjusting industrial 
and economic inequalities is, as said, sometimes a small 
concession in a few minor points at stake or a compro- 
mise on the main points. So rarely has the main point 
been sustained in entirety that an occasional triumph only 
serves to establish the rule by introducing the exception. 
The losses are usually, money, time, employment, good 
will and confidence in themselves, their striking brethren, 
their own power to command justice by peaceful means 
and faith in the just intentions of the world in general. 
Great and lamentable losses are all these, but the last 
named much greater and more regrettable than any other, 
than all the others. One that occasions more sorrow and 
actual suffering than any other to be mentioned. To go to 
the root of matters it is the occasion for strikes and their 
full cause as well as the prime origin of conditions that 
work such disasters. Confidence is the great moving 
force in the world of economic effort as well as in other 
realms of human intercourse and dependence and an as- 
surance of justice is all that is needed to work harmony 
there as elsewhere. 

By strikes supported by half-way measures in legisla- 
tive attempts to preserve the worker's rights, labor has 
been able to just keep above the dead level of wage slavery 
toward which our one-sided competitive system constantly 
urges. Strikes and legislative orders have not availed to 
check that drift — they have only removed the day a little 
in which strikes become impossible through inability of 
workers to strike. The contraction of avenues to self- 
employment and the constant decrease of wages in general 



212 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

move steadily to a situation where labor is hopeless in 
the face of further encroachments. Labor has not by all 
tried means been able to control a proportionate share of 
the wealth that has been called into form under the deft 
fingers of workers united to the advantages secured by 
capital. Labor's interests cannot be guarded by such 
methods. It is not in the nature of one-sided competition 
where the advantage and strength of resistance are all on 
one side. 

There are too many standing idle in the market places 
of labor to render strikes longer efficient or even safe to 
the aggrieved. There are too many with whom necessity 
has severed those ties of brotherhood that once made the 
entire wage and work world rally to the support of any 
particular body of workers who felt themselves to a point 
where justice and manly independence dictated a cessa- 
tion of work until an honorable adjustment of differences 
could be arrived at. The law governing hunger is the 
gaining of food, and where one lays down the tools now 
another is ready to take them up to use them with all the 
skill possessed and with all the assiduity of the first. 
This he will do for the pay his predecessor felt he could 
no longer receive for the services rendered. 

Trades-unions and organizations of a like nature have 
added their share of power in staying the process of low- 
ering wages. But results of unions are only a fraction in 
the general sum of what must be wrought. Trades-unions 
to be appreciably effective must embrace the whole body 
of workers. To keep up wages there must be none out- 
side the organization to bid against the unionists. This 
end is not easily accomplished and is one that would vitiate 
the active principle of unions under present regulations. 
There are workers who will not organize, and who being 
not under bonds to stand for a certain rate of wages will 
work for less than union rates. This destroys the effect 



REMEDIES 213 

of unions. However useful such organizations may have 
been in the past, their day too, is over. Boycotts, the right 
hand of trades-unions, are of a time gone by. The indus- 
trial organism is too complex and far-reaching in action 
and unorganized labor and increasing population too un- 
controllable to make orders of this kind effective. By the 
action and reaction of consumption affecting production 
and production in general distribution affecting consump- 
tion, ally effort at exclusively class benefits must fail for 
class benefits must depend upon general prosperity. 
Farmers cannot prosper unless there be a demand for 
their products. Mechanics cannot command farm pro- 
ducts unless they receive wages. Wages in the mechanic 
arts will always exactly correspond to the degree to which 
workers in these industries are able to command wages 
independently of employing capital. These wages, ex- 
perience shows, will generally reflect to a degree the state 
of trade by an added amount representing the competi- 
tion for laborers in all fields of industry. This competi- 
tion will cease utterly when all opportunities have been 
closed if population has reached a point where there are 
more workers than the controllers of opportunities find 
necessary to carry on production. 

Attempts at force through strikes, organizations and 
proscriptions accomplish nothing as finalities; their 
potency is waning now to the point of eclipse. The game 
is with capital-monopoly for the advantages are there. 
Capital-monopoly, and even capital alone as matters now 
stand, can starve out labor many times a year and still 
do a thriving business. This is in part due to the disor- 
ganized state of labor, largely to the natural and un- 
natural strength of capital given by virtue of monopolizing 
power and in fact of monopolized opportunities. 

An intelligent and consistent use of the powers for cor- 
rection of all social evils as these powers reside in the 



214 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

people will be found the only avenue to reform. A level- 
ing of opportunities and a steadfast abiding therein will 
be found necessary to a continuing of reforms. The 
power for correction is exercised at the polls. Back 
of the ballot expression lies the power in the rights 
of mankind. These powers the monopoly forces can be 
made to feel and respect, liking it or not. The all-power 
must be brought to bear on the situation. It is out of all 
experience and beyond all belief that time-entrenched 
wrongs will yield by persuasion and pity the advantages 
they have grasped and exercise to the detriment of all 
but the holders. In the records of history we find no such 
proceedings. They know no pity for the unfortunate; 
they prosper by the failure of others; some, many, must 
fall that they may mount higher in the realizations of their 
unholy aspirations. The few who would deal fairly are 
restrained from doing so by the system which makes them 
to practice relations they cannot escape and survive. They 
are bound by the injustice governing our industrial organ- 
ism and only in part can they share the fair measure of 
common responsibility. The vital conditions they can- 
not alter. The many who have no thought for justice 
know nothing convincing or persuading but urges them 
on toward further gains. They will yield not until com- 
pelled to do so by the determined demands of the supreme 
majesty of the people. 

Every voter in the land remains responsible for inequali- 
ties that continue. It is true this means has failed us 
often, that many times the ones to whom we looked for 
relief disappointed us dismally, to all effects, sold out to 
the enemy. So far as virtual relief was affected it mat- 
tered not very greatly, for we have asked for but little; 
and even that little was denied us. The means failed be- 
cause we applied it in a half-hearted manner. There is 
not a bargain-counter senator in the land who would keep 



REMEDIES 215 

the business world in suspense while he caucuses and 
wrangles over the rate of duty on collars and cuffs, if he 
in so doing jeopards his office and standing. There is 
not to be convened a congressional bucket-shop for specu- 
lation and manipulation of prices in the peoples' necessi- 
ties if experience could show that such assemblages would 
be succeeded by men who have a higher conception of a 
public office than that which converts it into a business 
transaction wherein he is shrewdest who commands the 
highest price. The way is still open for redress and re- 
form of all social wrongs by the exercise of the rights of 
free men. Change in social conditions will not come while 
the actions of the past in legislative operations are held 
as the ideal of the future. 

No, friend, the way you suggest by that determined 
shake of the head and low muttering voice is not good. 
It would be good if there were no better way, no other 
way at all. Your way, of any two, would be the coward's 
way, the oppressor's way, causing others to suffer as 
much as you have suffered. It is the last way, not to be 
considered until all others have failed. Fire and blood 
are both good, but in their proper places ; the first under 
boilers that set the wheels turning and belts whirring a 
healthy music ; the second is good in the strong arms and 
clear brains of master workers whose deftness of touch 
and delicacy of perception create those wonders of inge- 
nuity that crown our civilization. Swift-handed justice 
and satisfactory restitution are yours in another way, more 
creditable to yourself, and more humane, more just to all. 
It is clear you have asked for what you were promised, 
and were then denied, flouted. It is plain you were mis- 
led, tricked ; sane men, patriots and workers would never 
vote for the condition we find ourselves in as a nation 



216 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

of workers. But you can force your servants by pre- 
scribed methods, to do what you require of them. 

That little flag by which you have been deceived, be- 
lieving it to be a truce emblem, with its white of life on 
one side, its black of death mingled with the peace signal 
on the other, must wave to another purpose, and with 
greater decision. It is your signal emblem to those with 
whom you treat and by it you express your choice of fate, 
yes, even your determination toward those who have 
failed you. When you are called to fold it up and lay it 
away in the holy of holies where you as high priest enter 
alone, see to it that you are not misunderstood, that you 
and your brother may not again earn the classification of 
voting cattle. See to it that your enemies understand 
that it can flutter to another and more unmistakable pur- 
pose than they supposed if the powers you create dare 
show defiance to your sovereign decision. The power to 
make or mar is yours and you are responsible for your own 
conditions. Otherwise you are not a free man. If you must 
accept simply what is offered you, where is your free- 
dom? Believe it not when it is said you cannot help 
yourself. Your great trouble is that you have helped 
yourself too much — the other way. Hence you are where 
you are and not where you would like to be. That your 
conditions have been hard hitherto and are growing hard- 
er constantly you must answer for. When you have 
wearied of them to a degree where you will assert your 
right supported by your might your conditions will mod- 
ify. They will respond in exact degree to the energy, 
determination and direction in which you move. To you 
as guardian of your own rights, be the issue as you decide. 

It can be done. If you have life and not mere plasticity 
it will be done. Do you know, my friend of the franchise 
right, you have laid yourself open to the charge of inde- 
cision and purchasability ? It is said you are variable in 



REMEDIES 217 

your choice, that your variability often hinges on your 
venality. The charge is solemnly made, aside from par- 
tisan bickerings, that in fear of losing employment and 
by other means of intimidation, and for reasons yet more 
flagrantly venal you have voted for men to guide the 
policy of state whom in your heart you rejected and with 
whose policies you were at utter variance ; that you have 
in times given over your interests into the keeping of 
those you have believed to be your enemies. If this be 
true, and the charges are established to all but the point 
of absolute proof, then you but reap after the kind you 
have scattered. Insincerity in no realm eventuates in sin- 
cerity, farthest from all in the realm of politics. Know 
at all times that the man who offers a bribe in any form 
soever is your enemy. If food and shelter are to be won 
at the price of your integrity now, the time draws toward 
us when the sale of your honor will cease to command 
even this small price. You will then, even as now, accept 
such wages as are offered you without a promise of bet- 
ter, which promise, no matter what priceless privilege 
you sacrificed for it, you have failed to realize. 

If it is to the interests of one man to bribe many, it is 
against the interests of those bribed; otherwise you 
would not be hired to vote contrary to your will and 
judgment but would be left to be convinced by reason and 
the course of events to come to a different understanding. 
The bribe giver expects to make a profit off your votes as 
he would expect a profit off his money invested in live 
stock or railroad shares. You may be made promises but 
your trust in these promises has not been strengthened by 
experience. Insincerity, evil, deception, bring forth insin- 
cerity, evil and deception, world without end. If the vote 
seeker who resorts to fraud to capture the law-making, 
law-executing, and yea, law-interpreting forces of the land 
tricks the vender of votes no charge of breach of faith can 



218 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

be preferred. Faith cannot exist between such parties. 
Let it be known that established monopolizations and 
moneyed powers offer no inducements to labor for votes in 
favor of the men who would compel a more equitable 
distribution of the profits of industry. It has never been 
so. If you accept the promise of employment for the 
barter of the badge of citizenship or allow the hope of like 
reward to corruptly influence your use of the priceless 
conservator of your liberties, it may be you will have to 
resort to other means to restore the blessings you have 
bargained off for such poor pottage. You cannot buy 
them back by your present way. If you continue to make 
merchandise of the ballot you will continue to be tricked. 
Such a franchise is not respected by any, least of all by the 
powers exercising corrupt control over it. The ballot 
power rightly exercised is a sufficient guarantee and safe- 
guard of our liberties. Its pollution results in the con- 
tempt of plutocracy for the element wielding it and for 
all elements the purchasable ones may be made to repre- 
sent. 

No iron hand is necessary to regulate the disturbed 
social equilibrium of our land. All is not lost, nor even 
an alarming amount of the civil power of the citizen. 
The powers of government as vested in the American 
citizen have been crippled and curtailed because Ameri- 
cans have not guarded their rights ; rights of common- 
alty have been trampled and spat upon only because the 
people have not enough respected their own importance. 
No impartial consideration can find more cause of com- 
plaint against the desecrators of the temple of liberty 
than against the keepers who permit their entrance and 
possession. Vigilance on the part of the people would 
have prevented the abuses from which we now suffer; 
vigilance and determined action now would abate them. 
All are not venal, all are not traitors. There are patriots in 



REMEDIES 219 

the land to serve it if there be patriots enough to support 
them in getting back to first principles. It is child's incon- 
sistency and pettishness to barter a pearl for a soap bubble 
and then cry if the bubble realizes less than it seemed to 
our wondering anticipation to promise. Workers who sell 
votes on any construction of a promise of wages should 
not grow indignant, should not entertain surprise if shops 
close. Bribe proffering is no less despicable than bribe 
taking and the man who is traitor enough to offer com- 
pensation for votes should not be supposed to possess 
that kind of integrity that will secure the pay for vote 
sellers after the goods have been delivered. Constituen- 
cies returning to legislative halls men who have proven 
corrupt cannot look for honesty in legislation. Such rep- 
resentatives will prove no more vigilant warders of lib- 
erty than are the people who elect them to their places of 
power. 

To the citizens, free men of America, has the keeping 
of her greatness and integrity been consigned. There is 
no power known to make a people greater, nobler, juster, 
than their own hearts dictate and acts determine. The 
destiny of this land, as of all lands, is to be fashioned by 
its people. 

Do you know, your most supreme plutocratic indiffer- 
ence, that there are hoarse murmurings and deep rum- 
blings in this sea of humanity about you that may portend 
something to you and the course you have sought to run ? 
It is not well to be so high up as to be out of touch with 
the human elements of our world and upon whom we must 
depend in all things. If your supreme plutocratic indif- 
ference would lend an occasional ear from the music of 
money changing to the deep heart throbs and swift 
thoughts that flash from mind to mind in the common 
level and those levels lower down that run in strong un- 



220 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

dercurrents manifested by casual whirls on the surface, 
you might hear things that would supersede your concen- 
tration on cash. Perhaps, having heard this other chorus, 
you would be wise enough to carry less sail and be more 
content to run with the tide than seek rather to outstrip 
the powers that bear you up. 

It is not merely surface deep, as has been attempted 
consolation and courage with that assertion. Nor is it 
the dregs, scum, and filth you have been so persistently 
declaring. If it were these it might merit the contempt 
you bestow upon it. You have attempted some wise 
things and have succeeded in accomplishing some foolish 
things in your contempt. Some few years ago, by action 
of court, there were a few men hanged in this land be- 
cause they exercised what to them seemed the free speech 
provision of our charter. Hanging may be a good thing 
for anarchy, doubtless, but you have heard how words 
change in use and acceptation. Their language was con- 
sidered anarchistic in those days so short a time ago. 
Elevation calls attention whether the elevation be by a 
throne or a hangman's scaffold. So anarchy, so-called in 
that day, being elevated, challenged attention as to whe- 
ther it was what it was hanged for or no. Thought is 
electrical and the pace set by that court is too rapid to 
keep up with. It would take a considerable gallows to ac- 
commodate all of those who this day think and speak in 
stronger terms than were used in the memorable Hay- 
market, and man for man, it would take an army of hang- 
men to strangle "anarchy" by cords to-day. There are 
better, safer ways of appeasing anarchy, severer, surer 
ways of choking it. That is the way of killing its cause. 
The task by the first method is too extensive. Do you 
not see anarchy, unnamed as such even by cant term of 
political phrase building, in the daily and weekly, even 
other prints of the times? It is there, my friend, in the 



REMEDIES 321 

irrepressible thought expression of gravely earnest men. 
You will hear more of it than you can read, if you will 
listen. It is talked on the streets, in shops, in homes — 
everywhere in groups of workers employed, would-be- 
workers unemployed. This thing that you have named 
anarchy has not been strangled along with those who were 
said to have voiced it. If the whole world turn anarchis- 
tic then must anarchy go unhung for lack of a hangman 
and other means must be found to strangle and appease 
anarchy. 

They do not call it anarchy. They more fitly name it 
revolution, looking to a restoration of privileges. They 
have not yet determined in what form it must come but 
they confidently expect it. The Iron Hand is only thinly 
gloved and its grip will be death to those who force its 
grasp, for they say if need makes necessary, it is nobler 
and carries a promise of salvation to the rest that a few 
score thousand men should meet death face to face in a 
matching of strength than that a like number should 
perish annually of starvation. The world would call it 
nobler, too ; has ever called such resolution and such death 
nobler than the wearing out of existence that comes to 
those who wait for the crumbs that fall from the table of 
usurped privileges. 

The question that should be of greatest interest to your 
most supreme plutocratic indifference is, Must the change 
inevitable come this way? The spirit of freedom is not 
dead, nor so much as crushed ; it only sleeps, and that in 
fitful restlessness that threatens, yea, promises instantane- 
ous awakening. That awakening precedes one of two 
things — the peaceful restoration of usurped and abused 
power, or its restoration to the people by other than peace- 
ful ways. The one thing sure to follow the arousing is a 
restoration. Your most supreme plutocratic indifference 
may be ab]§ to say from whom those powers will be 



222 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

wrested in the restoration. None should be more inter- 
ested. A gracious acquiescence in the demands of 
awakened freemen will do much to promote the felicity 
of the restoration inevitable. Commissions appointed to 
investigate the relations of the hired to the hirer are an ac- . 
knowledgment of the need of rightful conditions govern- 
ing the two extremes of society and the tacit confession 
of the insufficiency of the present system to meet the re- 
quirements of our industrial state. They are a confession 
of the necessity for a change in our industrial scheme. 

The drift of affairs does not assure labor of humane 
intentions on the part of capital. When capital reen- 
forced by monopoly persistently reduces wages and binds 
labor to continue work or forfeit wages already earned, 
there seems little hope of accomplishing reforms through 
the support and cooperation of the masters of labor. 
When the monopoly masters of labor sit in the high places 
of the nation's legislature the hope of reforms that way 
seems little grounded. That the same masters after hav- 
ing forced labor into slave-wage contracts should seek 
to place the whole burden of blame for labor disturbances 
on the responsibility of labor is not in itself pleasing and 
confidence inspiring. Under a system of industry divid- 
ing humanity into two classes, laborers and the hirers of 
labor, the control of production rests with the latter and 
the wage paid is of their will also. It is not hard to un- 
derstand ; production will proceed when masters find it 
profitable, wages will be low for laborers can not employ 
themselves. It does not do to rest the case on the com- 
mon statement that production will proceed as demands 
justify and that wages will be governed accordingly. 
There are too many limitations affecting demand where 
so large a portion of the consuming class are wage 
workers and where monopolization has placed the re- 



REMEDIES 223 

serves beyond the reach of laborers. In such conditions 
capital must pay living wages or worse follow. Men must 
live if the power to command life necessities does come 
by way of wages paid for application of labor to oppor- 
tunities held and operated by capital. 

There is much to be said in the behalf of capital, and 
for the good done and still in hand no patriot or lover 
of right spares words of praise. The rights of the capi- 
talists are sacred; sacred as the rights of all others, the 
rights of the class equal to those of any class. But the 
rights only, which never injured a member of society. 
It is the special privileges that capital has arrogated and 
that labor has conceded that work the injury. This much 
remains to be said beyond all claims for the proper 
offices of capital : capital, as the term is broadly used to 
cover those interests in industry distinct from labor, has 
through the appropriation of natural resources aided by 
legislative favoritism gotten control of production and 
the means of production. The power, field wide, is all 
but absolute ; in particular places, complete from point of 
law as law now stands. Capital in some form, perhaps 
devoted to speculative purposes, owns the land, so the 
man who does not own land may not cut wood from it 
though his children be freezing. He may not put in a 
garden if his family be starving, unless he pays rent 
which out of the produce on three acres he may be left 
what stands on two or one, according to the terms he 
may be able to make. He may not go to work in the fac- 
tory, for capital erected the plant, and although the world 
may need the product of his hands, there he may not 
work if capital refuses him a place. He cannot sail a 
ship; he cannot drive a locomotive engine across the 
plains, transferring goods from point to point where 
they are most wanted; capital owns and controls these 
means of transportation, and though mankind may be 



224 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

robbed in rates by present management, none may take 
control and conduct them for the good of society for 
they are capital's. In contemplation of all these facts does 
no rational remedy disclose itself? Man, if you were 
cast into deep water a mile from shore, being an expert 
swimmer you would preserve your life. If you had tied 
to you a weight that would prevent your making more 
than a fourth of the distance to safety you would cut 
the bonds that unite you to that weight, letting it sink to 
the bottom while you rose buoyant, triumphant, setting 
out with steady, confident stroke to the shore. You would 
disconnect yourself from the burden if it were one of 
gold and jewels precious beyond compare in the world's 
valuation, for against their value in the world's estimation 
to you they are not worth clinging to, because you meas- 
ure them against life. How much more would you cast 
away the weight if it was the body of a dead beast, cor- 
rupting your own flesh, profitless even to itself. 

From point of law as law now stands, labor has no 
alternative but that of sitting down to patient starvation 
when capital ties the string of the wage purse and locks 
up establishments of productions. This is a point labor 
commissions would do well to note when investigations 
are set on foot, looking to the cause of social unrest. 
Having thus control, if labor peacefully submits, it takes 
off the keen edge of capital's grief at the unhappy situa- 
tion. If force and riotous protests are resorted to the 
gentle humanity and sky-scraping patriotism of the great 
big heart of capital is violently shocked. Capital hopes 
labor will submit to arbitration when labor asks for arbi- 
tration. Capital is surprised that labor does not take a 
more dispassionate view of the case, that labor does not 
quietly and humanely starve on the reduction of wages 
that has been found necessary to capital's gains. Because 
the great body of consumers have no money they cannot 






REMEDIES 225 

buy the products of capital's offering, therefore labor 
must fast until some shift can be hit upon to start com- 
mercial machinery when consumers have failed to demand 
and business has reached a motionless condition. 

Capital locks up the money of a nation as too dear for 
the common touch, and then locks up shops because the 
commonalty does not demand wares. This done, labor is 
bade hold peace and feed on faith till better times, till 
prosperity and confidence take us under their wings as 
hens their broods, till government revenues are produced 
from deficits and all grow rich through workings of 
monopoly fostering laws. This is not the sum of the 
laborer's duties under the beneficent operation of 
monopoly discriminations. After waiting for the reali- 
zation of good times under monopoly control and good 
wages to follow the ability of hirers to pay good wages, 
he is to behold the competition in labor markets that still 
further reduces his ability to earn a livelihood by the 
only means open to him. Degraded labor such as has been 
drawing to a residence within our borders shuts him out 
in many fields in which he formerly ruled. He is thrown 
out because having been reared and educated to be a man 
he cannot consent to fill a place that would sink him to 
the level of a brute. This is what competition in the labor 
market will reduce him to if competition be unrelieved 
by openings that will permit the spreading out of pro- 
ductive forces. This is what he has been forced to accept 
at times even now, because, God help him, life is dear 
and the lives of his children dearer yet. And under it all 
he is asked to be calm, dispassionate; to await with un- 
failing trust the action of the very forces that have placed 
him where he is ; to abide such adjustment of the difficul- 
ties as will leave his masters in industry in a position to 
continue the role of masters, strengthened in their mas- 
i5 



226 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

tership. These are the ways, he is told, by which he will 
best conserve his own interests. 

If you read the press of your country, your most 
supreme plutocratic indifference, you must occasionally 
see some remarkable accounts if your curiosity in all 
save that which most openly concerns your cause leads 
you away from stock reports and the like. Turning to 
those pages recording the world's history in tragedy, 
some worthy news may be found. If you have missed 
these columns, too bad. Their message will give you 
some idea as to the actual condition of the labor you say 
is the best paid in the world. You might be able to 
gather many things from these records that would account 
for the, to you, inexplicable acts and demands of the 
working world. You might learn of the results following 
your advice to workers who wait for better times for 
wages and bread. These records tell to the rest of man- 
kind, no matter how indifferent you are to them, of sui- 
cides to avoid starvation; of things worse than suicide 
to avoid starvation; losses of reason from hunger; how 
fathers scourged by desperation at their state will take 
the lives of whole families, — these and such other tales 
to sicken the heart and cause grave people who are dis- 
passionate with the reflecting calmness of those personally 
untouched by the sadder phases of our industrial wrongs 
to demand why these things should occur and whence 
their cause. This sort of news matter is not scarce even 
in the papers, but the reading world knows the cases 
chronicled are few compared to the number of events 
of this kind which really take place. More unnatural 
than these, the same records herald to the world the 
most revolting acts the world ever saw, how despairing 
mothers sell their babes to secure them against immediate 
death, if not such lives as their parents are to know. And 
you still wonder why labor is not passively content and 



REMEDIES 227 

refuses to wait for better times for a dinner. You are 
still shocked that the world can see aught demanding a 
change in the orders producing these results. 

No other nation of earth could have preserved such a 
fine appearance or met the assaults made by treachery 
and receive such dagger thrusts under guise of friendship 
and aid to the national life, and been so little overthrown. 
It is this same treacherous misrepresentation of intentions 
and the utter insufficiency of measures heralded as the 
preservers of labor's rights and the entire disregard 
of labor's needs and rights in the framing of other laws 
that cause the unrest and threatening aspect of labor in 
times when the natural results of the double dealings ar- 
rive. The crowding for increased power over all classes ; 
the grasping of the forces of production, thereby closing 
up all possible avenues of escape to labor independent of 
capital as a distinct factor in the industrial life ; the inun- 
dations of low priced foreign laborers that have been 
brought here in times past to underbid American workers, 
that still arrive by thousands under guise of seeking citi- 
zenship, — these are some of the causes leading to the 
awakening of labor to the peril in which the class stands. 
The growth of their helplessness under present conditions 
presents to them a grim and startling picture of the state 
they are meant to occupy if they do not prevent their own 
enslavement. 

You profess to marvel at the impatience of this class 
when in desperation at their wrongs they commit acts 
that startle you with the earnestness of their determina- 
tion. There is not, probably, another nation of workers 
who would have suffered their relative falling away in 
power and advancement with as little disturbance of 
social quiet. That they are beginning to make a stand 
promises much for the general state of society in times 
to come. If final equilibrium must be reached through 



228 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

disorders let it be remembered that disorder is not the 
result of a single factor, for resistance must be met if 
there is disturbance when a movement is begun. We 
have not tasted the beginning unless we remove the 
causes for the demonstrations witnessed in late years. 
We have witnessed things not pleasant from some points 
of view; they will increase while their cause fails to 
diminish. There will be many an uprising, many a 
torched and clubbed protest emphasized and horrified 
by wreckings, dynamitings, killings and other like diver- 
sities which labor's enemies will not need to embellish in 
gruesomeness. It takes no Jeremiah to predict and weep 
over this. A knowledge of human nature coupled with 
an observation of past events and present tendencies shows 
the determination of both classes. Unless the element 
that makes for the wise settlement and adjustment of 
differences acquires control there is more trouble to face 
than lies in the rear. 

Americans have imbibed strong ideas of the equality 
they have heard so much about. It is useless in the case 
to say that a great many of these ideas are erroneous and 
contrary to the best interpretation of the text, that they 
are unreasonable, absurd, impossible. They are here, 
potent factors in these uncertain times. They are here, 
the groundwork of future good when these dark days 
have passed into history. It is not possible for labor 
to hold ideas more untrue as to the office of the word 
than are the ideas of ultra-monopolists. The one simply 
offsets the other. Good will come of the teaching, 
let its acceptance be as diversified and erroneous as 
it will, for notwithstanding absurdities and crudities a 
grain of truth withal must find lodgment in the mind of 
the world. The greater the divergence the less likely 
that either extreme will prevail. The standard of equity 
as a personal belief, like all other standards, must vary to 



REMEDIES 229 

suit the taste of all. As a practical application to con- 
ditions the future meaning of the word will be one modi- 
fied by the terms it expresses between all classes. 

It is hard to determine which view is more wrongful 
if either extreme carried a hope of realization. We find 
these opposites in belief speaking in the extremist who 
thinks he has a right to share the rich man's store, and in 
the belief of his antipode who holds that things are about 
equally divided when his daily income mounts into the 
thousands beyond expenses, and the incomes of the men 
who do his work mount up toward the dollar line, not 
counting expenses. The one is scarcely more disgusting 
than the other, but of the two the last has done more prac- 
tical harm in the world. We hear more remark on the 
ridiculousness of the first belief, because, having sup- 
posed that all had an equal chance to gain riches we have 
concluded that he who did not was a worthless spend- 
thrift, and he who did we have supposed to only avail 
himself of opportunities open to all. Indeed, many have 
not only thought this to be the secret of our unbalanced 
economic state, but have gone to the length of talking it. 
Good white paper has been defiled with the statement. 
Politicians whose trade makes truckling to plutocracy 
profitable to both parties have enlarged upon it. 
Preachers of the supposedly Christian gospel have dese- 
crated their sacred offices to a support of the theory. The 
state and church influence seems to be against the man 
who has failed to live up to his supposed privilege of 
money-getting. In the state and church estimate of man- 
hood it would appear that he who will forego his birth- 
right of wealth collecting, or he who has for any reason 
failed to live up to this standard, deserves two attentions, 
good advice and soup house. These but not more. A sub- 
sidized press has its influence; the politician has his re- 
ward from those he serves ; but poor old church, — the vest- 



230 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

ings of heaven include no sandal soft enough to deaden 
the click of the cloven hoof when the garb is stolen for 
such a service. You have all gone after strange gods, so 
strange that the heart of humanity must feel you alien. 

If we would avoid the fate of depressed and un- 
justly conditioned old world states we must avoid their 
follies. Many of the latter having found shelter and prac- 
tice here, the former looms more and more threatening, 
more and more unavoidable. And we are grieved, 
shocked, at the protests made against that parallel condi- 
tion. What we are dallying with is the very danger we 
have execrated, self-warned against and scare-crowed 
with for years. Let us not hope to escape what we invite, 
let us not decry the efforts made to render their fate not 
ours. Effect will follow cause for the God of nations is 
not a discriminating God. His "Thou shalt not" is as 
fixed and eternal as His "Thou shalt," and binds en- 
lightened America in the same compass set for most 
pagan Mongolia, darkest Africa. If much shall be re- 
quired where much is given let the builders of America 
beware lest they are unable, when called, to return fair 
profits from the trust placed in their keeping. 

Would you American, patriot, as you love to be called 
and which you may be in your heart, although your acts 
so belie the claim, — would you hail the day in which you 
and the world would see your fellow-citizen, a free Ameri- 
can, and yet nobler tie — a brother man — reduced to the 
level of your brute servant? It may put money into thy 
purse, but what will it put into his heart and thine ! What 
will it put into our country, — what strivings, envyings, 
anarchisms, riots, assassins and wholesale destroyers of 
the public peace and its good. It is a revolting and sor- 
rowful sight to all true eyes to see him, a God-created 
being brought hither without his consent, to endure the 
buffets of this present world without his consent, and 



REMEDIES 231 

sometimes, more hopelessly, without his protest, so much 
the plaything of man's greed. But what shall be said of 
this other who profits by it, and of they who cause it to 
be? To see him standing in humility and entreaty, be- 
seeching, Feed me enough that I may have strength, 
clothe me enough that I shame not your modesty and I 
will give you my life; its manly strength, its precious 
time, its hopes, baffled and smothered, its ambitions, 
crushed and buried, its promise of good things, dis- 
pelled, — this, all I have, will I give you coined out in 
gold for that slight recompense. Rejoice not to see that 
day, for the end of all things pure and lovely and of good 
report has come for the people who abide its reign. Is the 
drift from that point or toward it? We are not stand- 
ing still. Let us no more be shocked at the protests of the 
workers. Let us welcome them rather as salvation from 
the death. 

In the bonds now uniting labor and capital never will 
be found peace. Dissensions will follow quiet and quiet 
succeed disorder as the struggle proceeds. Beyond the 
class who receive money from employers for service done 
the same causes act to promote uncertain movement. 
After political and social upheavals have effected a com- 
promise on points in favor of the ideas held by the labor- 
ing element, quiet will follow to such a time as wages are 
again crowded down by one or a union of the agencies 
that act as pressures against the wage scale. When the 
owners of productive wealth who have locked it up to 
serve their own ends at last consent to be magnanimous 
and allow labor to produce, a slow stream stirs the stag- 
nant waters of commerce and "good times" follow for a 
season. But industry in the control of a few is uncertain, 
prosperity or depression following their action. This is 
not solely the fault of those controlling industries; it 



232 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

is the not unnatural result of the effort at personal inter- 
ests that dominates private conduct of enterprise. That 
it is short-sighted and ruinous to the general prosperity 
does not interest present owners so much as their personal 
gains aggravated by the fear of competition calls for the 
crowding for every possible, even if temporary advantage. 
That a more socialized control or owning of many in- 
dustries has been found far more profitable in all ways 
will not convince the majority of those controlling pro- 
ductive agencies that it is to their good to follow the ex- 
ample. Inasmuch as it is the other class that suffer most 
from present arrangements it will in all probability fall 
to them to lead in the institution of changes necessary 
to the general good. 

All fractional remedies, all half-way lifts of the 
weights, all make-believes for the amelioration of the 
grievous condition of a class, who, if left alone and less 
legislated for and against would be abundantly able to do 
without extraneous help, may serve to put off the day 
of reckonings and changes. But it must come; come 
with the whirlwind's strife or with the gentle beneficence 
of natural justice and the persuasive power of truth. The 
demands for a change grow more imperative. It will 
be well in the coming of that day if the masters of labor 
do not too much withstand the change. History is their 
monitor. 

If labor has shown restlessness in the past it is because 
there has been a constant struggle on the part of those 
lowest down in the social grades to climb upward, — to 
climb up that they be not forced down. That this rest- 
lessness intensifies daily is due to the same cause in in- 
creasing persistence. 

Standing armies will not avail to preserve national ex- 
istence. Suggestions of this nature may be omitted from 
the list of possibilities, — and advisabilities if we will be 




REMEDIES 233 

warned by their example in other countries. Those who 
seek a salt potent to save the body must know that if 
soul be lacking there is no salt that will avail in the least. 
The only saving element is the love and patriotism of the 
people, -the soul of any government. The consecrated 
lives of loyal citizens are the only effective defense be- 
tween the enemy within or without and the institutions 
on which they train their batteries. Not many Ameri- 
can citizens would shoot down their countrymen to pre- 
serve peace by warfare when the issue be that of war 
or starvation. Occasionally there may be found one who 
in the capacity of peace officer will try to preserve order 
by instigating war through the murderous shooting down 
of peaceful men ignorant of the fact that it is not safe to 
march when would-be employers refuse a request. The 
conflict now going on may develop a few who would shoot 
down Americans as well as foreigners in a like manner, 
but many of the kind will never be found. 

If any man doubts the ability or spirit of the classes 
wronged in our social gradations to obtain redress in some 
form he has not earnestly and carefully dwelt on the sub- 
ject and studied it in its various phases and details. The 
spirit of dissatisfaction and restlessness, world-wide, is 
manifesting its presence here by demonstrations that por- 
tend change in some form. The socially contented apolo- 
gist who would brush this away with the unexplanatory, 
unsatisfactory and untruthful statement that the laboring 
classes were ever classes of unrest and discontent, threat- 
ening the stability of society, proposes no remedy. He 
cannot believe a continuation of the present condition 
will prove remedial, even though he makes their lot not 
so very much to grumble at. Their condition is such as 
they make it, he argues. This is true, but why the objec- 
tions to efforts put forth in regard to that condition, 



234 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

knowing it to be such as they make it? Their condition, 
better or worse than now, fifty years hence will still be 
such as they make it, such as they to-day are molding 
for to-morrow. The apologist further says their number 
they regulate and the crowding down of wages is due to 
their own blind folly in not regulating their lives by the 
rules evolved by the apologist. Let them cease to increase 
in number, live within their means (yes, to be sure ; at the 
risk of ceasing to live), and all will be well. 

Sir, all will be well, with or without the rigid adherence 
to your suggestions your self-sufficiency would proclaim 
them worth. All will admit the great importance of your 
ideas, but few will call them sovereign for the correction 
of the social injustices complained against. Education 
and advice from one class to another are strong factors 
in molding the lives and customs of generations, but they 
are more potent if along the lines of expediency and com- 
mon sense. 

If the causes for complaint are really the chimeras we 
are asked to regard them, as great a difficulty would then 
arise. This is the difficulty of persuading miserable, 
hungry, half-clad wretches that they are in truth happily 
placed, well nourished, comfortably clothed, altogether, 
a most prosperous class. This is what the apologist is 
trying to do now, but the weight of opinion is against his 
effort. Moreover, he finds himself working under difficul- 
ties occasioned and aggravated by the sensitive state in 
the minds of those he would soothe, the state caused by 
the very conditions he argues as non-existent. Support- 
ing a family on seven and one-half dollars per month, as 
has been known in some districts of our best paid labor in 
the world is an engrossing task, one not fitted to produce 
patience with the representations of the apologist, kind as 
they are. Seasons of partial activity alternate with those 
of depressing, stagnating idleness. General expansions 



REMEDIES 235 

of business react on periods of peril and disaster brought 
about by mad-class legislation for the space of a genera- 
tion. Then plunging again into a state of atrophy by a re- 
turn of the effects of favoritism, with always the laboring 
man as the basis of spoliation leaves but little time for a 
consideration of the apologist's claims by those for whom 
they are made. Periodic cataclysms make havoc in the 
world of industry, and labor must from the defenseless 
position held suffer far in excess of relative ability to meet 
the disasters wrought by such occurrences. Labor is 
always the force against which the breakers of industrial 
agitations beat, tearing, wearing the strength of society's 
defense. 

If after a third of a century since African slavery was 
discontinued in our country we can find no defenders for 
such a revolting institution in the numbers of those who 
at the time of the great civil struggle believed it to be 
right, how much less will there be a defender of our pres- 
ent state after our industrial wrongs have been righted, 
as righted they will be some day? 

There are features of it that cannot continue. He who 
honestly investigates will find them. Opinions as to the 
best way of reducing them, of minimizing their force, of 
abolishing them, must vary as they always have, but the 
strong heart of the nation looks for justice to its workers. 
With brawny men telling out their life strength in return 
for recompense insufficient for the barest needs of exist- 
ence; with others, strong and willing to work, starving, 
or stealing, or begging bread ; with women and children 
adding the weight of their small strength in labor un- 
womanly and unchildlike to help bear the burden of physi- 
cal life, we cannot continue. All this has been brought 
about in a few years. All of which could have been 
avoided if the keepers of our heritage had been true to 
their trust. All of which could be soon righted now if the 



236 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

majority of those who recognize a necessity for change 
could unite on a satisfactory, a workable plan of action. 
A few years more at the progress in the present direction, 
a slave's portion where the owner is compelled by humani- 
tarianism and force of public sentiment to feed and clothe 
his human property would be an earthly paradise to the 
average wage toiler. 

One speaking for the forces of monopoly says there is 
to be a change in the wage scale. But the change, 
it is said, will be a still further reduction of the pay labor 
is now able to command, and not an increase. And was 
it for this American laborers trusted their all to the 
monopoly capitalist and his kindred? We shall see. If 
Americans have lost all that sterling manhood bequeathed 
them by their forefathers, if the principles of justice and 
freedom for which they have been celebrated be with 
them of so sickly vitality that a generation of encroach- 
ments has crushed them, if patriotism has ceased to be a 
part of the national life, then may the arrogant and plun- 
dering plutocracy of the land grow so insolent in aggres- 
sion that avowals of further enslavement may be openly 
indulged. But if, on the contrary, Americans reverence 
truth and national preservation more than they cringe 
to the powers of law-sanctioned wrongs it were unwise 
for plutocracy to reveal so much of actual intentions. 

If the word of the speaker for plutocracy be true, then 
is our end as the end of others who have failed to follow 
right. It is certain the completion of present tendencies 
has but the one end, — a nation going down to burial at the 
cross-roads, its requiem the curses of men, the sobs of 
women and the dying moans of starving children. But 
there are those outnumbering plutocracy who work for a 
fairer destiny, and with many promises of success. 






CHAPTER X. 

OUR PECULIAR CASE. 

All people are capable of self-government. Governments 
prove this. That efforts at self-government do not appear 
more highly successful from a scientific view-point of 
governmental methods and results does not argue the fail- 
ure of the scheme or the absence of inherent powers of 
government. It only argues the non-existence of those 
ideas and conditions that are said to be necessary, which 
are necessary for those peoples who are ready for them, 
which cannot be forced into acceptance by those who have 
not grown in the principles. In all forms the government 
reflects the character of the governing, the ideas of the 
governed. No worse governments can be found than in 
those forms where unquestioned authority is vested in a 
single individual who is said to rule by the grace of 
God,— and as events would show, by the direct interposi- 
tion of the Devil. 

That the government portrays the character of the 
governed and governing is shown by the fact that the 
forms and customs grow toward the good demanded by 
the governed, fully picturing the state of the ruled by the 
ultimate acts of the ruler. Back of any government is 
the choice of the people, or that government yields sooner 
or later to the modifying influences of the people's senti- 
ments, or what more nearly represents their sentiments. 
We have seen it so in late years, as it has ever been seen. 
Think you a Turkish devil whose real title a polite world 
has softened to that of sultan could wantonly butcher de- 
fenseless and unoffending human beings, or his brother, 






238 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the government of Spain, torture brave and liberty loving 
human kind did not the first have his fanatic horde to 
execute his behests and the latter a little less frenzied 
army to carry out the intentions of their rulers, while 
Christianity went to prayers and civilization sharpened 
her plowshares ? Does it seem that the government of the 
United States of America could play at the game of 
George III. a little over a century after the War of Inde- 
pendence if the nation had not forgotten its origin and 
gone mad in the lust for power and money? Obligation 
to humanity is the watchword of tyranny. Moslemism 
proselytes at the point of the sword and Christendom cries 
aloud to the God of heaven for vengeance. Christianity, 
so-named, adopts the argument of the Musselman, pro- 
posing to civilize as well as religionize the Orient. The 
primary lesson in the series is presented by the canon's 
thunder, and the watchword is obligation to humanity. 
Who is the judge of civilization and religion? The 
nations of the world have made the test of strength the 
sole judge. There is nothing found demanding civilizing 
and religionizing until some nation has found a power 
weaker in land and naval forces. If the weaker power 
possesses natural resources and other wealth opportuni- 
ties the demand for civilizing and religionizing appeals 
to the stronger power with much greater imperiousness. 
The necessity for the work consists solely in the ability 
to force the civilization and religion by a seeming accep- 
tation into the lives of the people warred against. 

In all home governments the people govern or consent 
to be governed. Magna Charta would to-day be waiting 
in the depths of futurity had not some Runnymede proven 
the trysting place of liberty compelling barons who knew 
that kings arrogate to themselves powers inherent in all 
humanity, and exercise power only through the grace of 
God, the consent of the people and interposition of the 



i 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 239 

enemy of all. There can be no power in government or 
exercised by rulers but that delegated by the governed. 
All exercised beyond this or aside from this is usurped. 
Such usurpations can continue only so long as the gov- 
erned are content under them, submit to them, permit 
them. All plans of government are subject to revision 
and revocation at the will of the majority of people living 
under the provisions. This majority will vary according 
to the degree of power the unit has been exercising in the 
operations of government, according to his non-import- 
ance therein. In elective states certain majorities that have 
been determined are sufficient to compel changes ; in arbi- 
trary forms much greater comparative majorities are nec- 
essary. The majority opposed to John at Runnymede 
was very much greater than would be the majority re- 
quired to change a national law in England now. The 
majority required in Russia or China at the present day 
if a great change were to be agitated would be virtually 
the nation against one man supported by his army. Even 
so divided, the one man would probably prove sufficient 
to his own needs when so supported. 

Any people are capable of modified self-government 
through rightly chosen representatives if representative 
government is wanted. Any people are capable of self- 
government in the entirety through popular judgment of 
measures if a pure democracy is the ideal of that people. 
Wise and just government by these methods can be ar- 
rived at, but only by careful inspection of all that is pre- 
sented for approval. But the less direct the government 
the less representative of the people's freedom will it be, 
the less likely to serve the people with good and equitable 
laws. The less direct it is the more likely to serve the 
interests of those who watch for opportunities, of those 
able to bribe. 



240 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Any people are entitled to control all the conditions 
under which they live, so far as conditions are subject to 
human control. In themselves they are masters of all 
economic as well as political conditions. That economic 
operations under existing conditions choke industry and 
cripple capital and labor alike leads serious people to deny 
the utility and adequacy of the competitive system of in- 
dustry and ask that all producers be authorized to share in 
proportion to their contribution in the product of united 
toil. To advance to pure socialism is but a step, and in 
view of the unequal distribution of economic goods and 
the helplessness of producers there are many anxious to 
take the final step. It would be impossible to arrange a 
system more unfair to any class engaged in the production 
and handling of wealth than the present one in its relation 
to labor. The altruisic doctrine that earth's children are 
the true inheritors of earth's riches, that they are sharers 
in the bounties of nature and nature's provisions for life 
physical and its comforts is probably denied by none on 
first thought. But the proportion of sharing invites dis- 
cussion; prevailing methods of distribution repudiate the 
doctrine. We have found that society disintegrated, its 
units placed in such relation to each other that exchange 
becomes impossible, each earth-child will depend on his 
own ability to sustain physical life, and the right to use 
land being granted, each one will possess in unquestioned 
control all the wealth he is capable of producing. That 
there should arise, in the complex state of industry, a class 
of people who possess wealth without in any way con- 
tributing to wealth production is beyond defense when it 
is so undeniable that wealth belongs to him who fashions 
it. So if the controllers of wealth and wealth resources 
take exceptions to the wisdom and justice of the demands 
of socialism, there are arraignments of the prevailing 
situation they dare not defend unless they wish to con- 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 241 

vince all of the truth of the very severe charges concern- 
ing their aims and intentions as made by their opponents, 
the socialists. Socialism, embodying the beauty of altru- 
ism, stands forever balanced against the selfishness of 
one-sided competition, self-seeking individualism. Self- 
seeking is the gist of the indictment against the competi- 
tive system. The theory of competition is self, its practice, 
self, its results the extremes of wealth and poverty. If 
in their contempt for the theory there is mingled a great 
amount of fear on the part of the direct and most inter- 
ested opposers of socialism, they must consider the fact 
that it is more the result of present economic relations 
that causes the socialistic idea to root and flourish than the 
writings of its various schools. Nothing contributes so 
much to the downfall of a system as the long continued 
failure to do what it claims to do, the doing of the oppo- 
site of what it claims to do. Our industrial system is 
daily sitting in judgment upon itself. 

An interest in the welfare of labor such as the strong 
ought always to take in the weak is a moral responsibility 
which can never be enforced against capital by legislation. 
The relative strength and weakness of capital and labor 
will continue and increase while the present dispensation 
lasts. Capital, wealth, is strong in monopolization of pro- 
ductive forces and the class interests are strengthened and 
advanced by organization made possible by the few to be 
banded together for mutual and individual power. Labor, 
the fundamental producer, is weak through absence of 
organization, through diffusion of forces. Labor is the 
real power in the relation of employer to employe, in a 
natural state of industry; but the only way for workers 
to obtain justice as we have devised, must come through 
legislative demands and bungling attempts at the recon- 
struction of the productive activities of the country and 
16 



242 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the world. Where laws and customs go to develop a weak 
and a strong class in furtherance of natural tendencies 
toward oppression, pitiable is the one, brutal the other re- 
sult. For every man or woman driven through lack of 
honest employment to seek a living by unlawful means, 
there is a responsibility somewhere. It may not be any 
one person who is responsible ; very rarely does it happen 
that one of these unfortunates can point to an individual 
and say, Thou art the one. Such injustices are hard to 
place, being due to conditions rather than caused by indi- 
viduals. The injustice only is felt and can but be attrib- 
uted to the act and position of that vague and well- 
nigh indefinable power so hard to come at and arraign 
which we call "the people/' The cause of such misfor- 
tunes when chased to cover proves invariably to be some 
maladjustment of industrial forces, intrenched, perhaps, 
in years of abuse and law-sanctioned usage. The spirit 
of competition, is, under monopolization, inimical to the 
prosperity of the whole people, for under monopolization 
competition weakens the weak and strengthens the strong. 
It is so with us where monopolization is practiced to a de- 
gree exclusive of competition in all but unmonopolized 
departments of industry. In that healthy development 
in all departments the welfare of all engaged in produc- 
tion must be provided by an equal opportunity to labor, 
to produce, and to control the results of labor. 

The spirit of undivided profits makes monopolizations 
dangerous. Employers of labor do not carry on their en- 
terprises as charitable institutions to serve labor or for 
furnishing employment to labor that would otherwise go 
unemployed and destitute. Such businesses are purely 
personal and are conducted with a view to purely personal 
gains, and herein lies the basis of all socialistic truths. 
That each is by right entitled to what he earns has been 
twisted to fit a condition where each is entitled to what 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 243 

he can secure. While the object of personal gains is as 
legitimate on the part of capital as it is with labor the con- 
ditions governing the two interests are by present ar- 
rangements in the nature of opposition. The object of 
each, unless abused, is entirely fair. In no system embrac- 
ing either the principles of competition or the spirit of 
profit sharing would injury to one class or the other result 
if opportunities were equal. The failure of the com- 
petitive system is due to the feature of monopolization 
which makes competition one-sided, causing labor to com- 
pete against labor for an opportunity to produce, for on 
the ability as a producer and on the exercise of that ability 
the prosperity of labor hinges. 

From these causes we have grown a society of 
economics that is bound together by the wage rate and 
capital has grown too much in the belief that its sole obli- 
gation to the rest of society is in the payment of wages 
and the rest of society has grown too much in the accepta- 
tion of that belief. But employers of labor are not ab- 
solved in an ethical sense from all responsibility to those 
who under existing orders give them their lives at so 
much per day, when they pay their workers the stipulated 
amount. We have made our largest class our weak class, 
and have freed in a way, the strong from all claims upon 
their strength. There are obligations for provision of 
educational and recreative opportunities to all classes that 
bear specially upon the holders of wealth which they 
should be caused to assume and discharge. Such a pro- 
vision would prove a suitable introduction to more im- 
portant equalizations. 

No matter how falsely we may look at it, the strong are 
never absolved from responsibility to the weak. It would 
be well if the strong ones, collectively, of nations could 
realize their obligations in this. This obligation being 
repudiated, let the strength-factors be the more quickly 



244 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

distributed, for a nation cannot be stronger than its weak- 
est class. Out of the weaknesses of class-made distinc- 
tions strength grows sometimes that is terrible in its 
power. When that weak class swells to a majority, then 
is that weakness very great, very sorrowful, very shame- 
ful; then is the strength potential of that class most fit 
to tear society, to dissolve a nation of wrong doings and 
reconstruct it on truer lines. If we have not solved the 
problem of economic-social life with a better result than 
so much money for so many hours' work, then this old 
world might better have remained in a chaotic state so 
far as our work is concerned. If we, or they who succeed 
us cannot offer a better solution, or more earnestly try 
for a better, then heaven send the reign of chaos again, 
and that right away, lest other souls be born to learn and 
curse the mockery we have named progress and civili- 
zation. 

If human life and development can arrive at no higher 
place, no wiser place, no juster place, then it is a grotesque 
travesty on creative wisdom and our modern civilization 
with its unmeasured sufferings and abuses is a thing for 
angels to weep over and devils to chuckle at. When those 
who buy labor say in virtuality — be the claim as charitable 
as it may, as pretentiously patriotic as we know — I give 
you enough of your day's earnings to enable you to live 
overnight and enough beside to buy you a scant breakfast 
that you may have strength to do a forenoon's work and 
so earn your dinner — when capital does so much and pro- 
ceeds to withdraw from the ultimate fate of labor and 
society in general, there is a tendency toward, if not a long 
stride taken along the path that leads to industrial slavery. 

The phrase "industrial slavery" is not in good repute 
owing to its abuse by some who delight to use it on every 
possible occasion, fatalists, alarmists and numerous ists 
whose association with any cause retards the work they 

I 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 245 

would forward. There are many such in the world, per- 
haps as many of them as there are apologists and other 
ists of similar school who are as foolishly supportive of 
the wealth power as the former are foolishly antagonistic 
of it. The alarmist gives his cause odium from over- 
zeal and calamitous prophesying, seeing destruction 
everywhere; the apologist puts himself into contempt 
with all by his smooth assurance of infallibility of the 
unangelic host he represents, the necessity of a wealth 
power, seeing destruction nowhere. For the first class, 
heaven gave them a mind to discern but another power 
endued them with a morose false prophecy and gift of 
speech; so fears are in their way and the grasshopper is 
a burden to them. They suppose many evils to be be- 
yond the hope of help, and are taken by panic, because, 
since they could not see the beginning of others they 
cannot imagine the end. They have a sorry and thankless 
task. Nations, like individuals, like to listen to a recital 
of their virtues while not relishing a recital of their 
errors. We may be no more marked in our love of 
praise than others, but it is certain that the American 
public are given to look with aversion at everything that 
does not flatter the national pride and cater to the national 
ear with its love for the assurance that we are the greatest 
nation of earth and that Thy Kingdom Come has been 
fulfilled in us, with many other things equally desirable. 
The second class are complacent so long as they and their 
kind rule, hold firmly to the belief of Thy Kingdom 
Come — and strive to forward it. They could find a moral, 
and enact a legal justification for the destruction of half 
the world's population — it would make times so much 
easier for the remaining half. In this spirit a famine in 
breadstuffs in foreign cereal producing lands has been 
known to delight them ; it would advance the price of the 
home product and the reduction of numbers caused by 



246 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

starvations abroad would advance wages just a little 
everywhere, because if there are fewer to work in a given 
field the demand for labor then will increase. If the ex- 
tremists on either side would take middle grounds, both 
classes would stand nearer the truth. This is perhaps 
impossible for either, and since the phrase is not in good 
favor, may the love for it and the justification of its use 
diminish rather than increase. 

If laws for the compulsion of ethical truths cannot be 
enacted there can be such laws demanded of and forced 
from even billion-dollar congresses, of petty spite dead- 
locked senates and congressional hucksters in general as 
will compel a man to man honesty and fairness in the 
economic relations of society. If the public have no 
choice under the present elective system but to choose 
monopolists and monopoly bondmen to their law-making 
offices, they ought to do so reserving the right to dictate 
such laws as will not place the whole earth and all that 
therein are at the disposal of the lawmakers and the law- 
makers' masters. If this is impossible under the system 
let them change the manner of legislation. The parasite 
theory may be correct enough confined to its proper limits, 
but no tax-extortionist, no monopoly bloodsucking money- 
bags has yet proven either by argument or by demonstra- 
tion that social-economic members of this family, as de- 
veloped under the perversion of constitutionally defined 
American rights, are beneficial or welcome to the great 
body of the people. How far from beneficial they are, 
let the present speak for itself while lifting a warning 
hand to the future. How far from welcome in their 
misery dealing results, read the record of industrial dis- 
orders the past three decades for a testimony if memory 
serves not to keep present that array of revolts, ruin of 
property and blood-spilling of misguided and misgov- 
erned American labor. 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 247 

We are the cosmopolites of earth. Ours is a national 
character hitherto unknown. Race oppositions, religious 
oppositions, national oppositions, unite to form an inhar- 
monious mass hard to reconcile to the truth that the good 
of one must be reached through the good of all. Having 
made our country the refuge of the oppressed of all 
nations, the incongruous mass from foreign lands no 
sooner become acclimated and citizenized until the strug- 
gle is precipitated, each racial, each religious and each 
national faction seeking supremacy, or such coalitions as 
will result in supremacy, and the object not more to build 
up one than to tear down the other. Here confined within 
one national limit and subject to the same conditions we 
have the elements of discord, which in the old world are 
separated for the greater part into distinctive national 
groups. We have pope and anti-pope, factions hard to 
reconcile, and all the bitterness of spirit that follows in 
the train of religious bigotry and intolerations. We have 
nihilists, anarchists and monarchists out of all nations, 
irreconcilable in their aims. We have the oppressed 
and long suppressed who spring into dangerous activity 
at the removal of ever felt bonds. With all these our law- 
making bodies trifle; they agitate wantonly this antag- 
onistic and electric mass of humanity and protest they 
want peace. Politicians coax, promise and bribe, expect- 
ing that the end to double dealing will be forever deferred. 
Linking together and yet separating these uncongenial 
factors in our national composition as the non-conducting 
tie which unites and renders harmless these virulent posi- 
tives and aggressive negatives, is the earnest, thoughtful, 
order-loving class. This is the power of defense against 
the mighty forces within that vibrate with the tendencies 
of disruption and disintegration. This is the salt element 
preserving the wholesomeness of the organization, and it 
looks at times that they will not prove sufficient to the 



248 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

task because of the many and great demands made of 
them in their life preserving capacity. 

In the more intimate relationships of our national life 
we have yet other features to disorder. Such extremes 
as are found in the liberty accustomed Swiss, the enlight- 
ened Frenchman, the brave and aggressive Englishman 
jostle elbows in citizenship with the cringing, ignorant, 
browbeaten sans-culottism of many lands. Cleanliness 
and morality from the sturdy peasantry of Europe mingle 
more or less in daily life with the filth of the Orient. 
Order and patriotism come face to face with intrigues 
and disloyalties schooled in the prolific embroilments of 
dynastic oppressions and servile hatreds. We have the 
brutalizing agents of African and Mongolian miscegena- 
tionists and trespassers on many of the virtues of civiliza- 
tion. As antidote to these degrading influences we have 
what is scarcely less brutalizing in another way — the pre- 
cipitate regulators who punish violations with a severity 
and dispatch that have nothing of the softening and cor- 
rective elements of deliberate justice to recommend their 
methods. 

Such is, in part, the outline of the composite mass of 
human differentials from which the makers of America 
are to establish and perpetuate a state. The material, the 
situation, lie before us. Yes, such is the unavoidableness 
of fate, the necessity is upon us. We cannot deny these 
foreign elements citizenship. Could we shut out all who 
in the future come knocking for admission we would still 
have enough to invite study of ways and means of caring 
for those already here and harmonizing them. But we 
cannot deny any a portion in the good we have been able 
to institute. When we refuse them a participation in our 
national life, when we forbid them our opportunities we 
repudiate the virile principle and the cardinal virtue of 
our institutions. We ordained conditions of equality and 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 249 

participation for all who subscribe to our articles of faith. 
If our institutions are too weak to endure the strain of 
self-imposed burdens, so much the worse for the institu- 
tions, for they must then be swept aside. The necessity 
of fate directs us. There are systems of government 
suited to the needs of as heterogeneous a people as we are. 
Our nationality must prove superior to and stronger than 
the adverse forces introduced and of which it is at present 
composed. It must mold over these forces, amalgamate 
them and so incorporate them into the very spirit of na- 
tionality that they will contribute to the vitality and har- 
mony of Americanism. Out of this mass of differences 
must emerge the American, with a fixed national character 
and a fixed national purpose. This is, in part, our task. 
Ways must be found, a system flexible and firm that will 
hold together for this purpose the unlike elements of our 
hitherto unexampled national composition. The ways to 
accomplish this are not the ways of the politician, but are 
those which will secure the good of all despite the protest 
and effort of those who look upon the rights of citizenship 
as a power of revenge or a free gift of merchantable 
goods bestowed by the nation for the pleasure of citizens. 

A careful consideration of the elements composing our 
national family is an essential feature of statecraft and 
one worthy the engagement of the social evolutionist. 
America presents a field for development and study in 
state and society building unexampled to-day and unsur- 
passed in times past. 

Bestowing unbalanced power, legislating for one fac- 
tion or against one faction or class is an error than which 
there is none more unjust, none more fraught with possi- 
bilities of disaster. And yet class legislation is the rule. 
The old-world factions that enter into our national com- 
position find blended with the pretensions of political 



250 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

freedom the rule of classisms from which they had hoped 
to escape. The more American unit experiences with the 
nominal equality of all the virtual domination of fac- 
tions united by the common tie of greed. The creatures 
we have called forth threaten and defy us. The violence 
they commit on the rights of manhood and citizenship is 
a cry for redress but not so much as a firm rebuke has 
been offered as a countermove. It is but natural that 
their demands increase and their assurance mount with 
each successive triumph. There is nothing surprising in 
the circumstance when corporate powers dictate as the 
only terms on which employment is to be granted that 
employes vote for the man who will further the employ- 
ers' interests at the expense of the rest of the people. It 
is too old a tale to excite surprise. It is not surprising 
when colonization of voters is practiced, federal patron- 
age promised and wealth put to the direct use of ballot 
corruption by the beneficiaries of special legislation to 
secure the administration of affairs to those who will 
continue favors to the wealth power. We have grown 
dulled to these by repetition. When sugar kings defy 
senatorial investigations and insolently refuse information 
on methods and profits of concerns the senate helped to 
create, we are not surprised, for, looking to the past, 
the motto of such businesses is : Hitherto hath legis- 
lation helped me; looking to the future it is: From 
this time forward I will help myself. Unrebuked but not 
unthreatened is the power that would swallow up national 
integrity in greed and cancel manhood with the dollar. 
While plutocracy reaches out greedy hands for more and 
ever more the warnings of the watchmen of liberty are 
heard. But the tones blending with the clink of gold 
in the hands of the money changers make to them a queer 
confusion and sometimes they call the words anarchistic, 
sometimes treasonable; always something terrible, for 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 251 

gold-clinking hath a devil's voice to the ears that love 
nothing but its sound so all sounds that come to them 
take on the same nature. 

The conditions that prevail and grow in severity of 
injustice are responsible for the demands for a socializa- 
tion of production and distribution. It is a needed bal- 
ance. Society grows toward socialism through the ex- 
treme operations of class favoring laws. Legislation 
grows toward plutocracy urged thither by the demands 
and control of the classes. In the core of socialism is 
found the idea of service to humanity. In the core of 
plutocracy is found the idea of service to self. So while 
there is an aggressive plutocracy there needs an intelligent 
socialism to draw the policy of state away from the tend- 
ency to class service to that of universal service. 

Restrictive and expensive tariffs rendered doubly effec- 
tive for the promotion of trusts through the choking of 
universal competition have weighed us down for years. 
Yet the removal of all tariffs and basing taxation on direct 
property values cannot do all we must have done. De- 
creased volume of money, restricting the wage scale has 
helped heap up the burden. But an increasing supply of 
money will, as an end, do little to check the downward 
tendency of wages and reward to industry in all fields 
of legitimate enterprise. Defeats of taxation schemes 
designed to relieve the toilers and forms devised to pan- 
der directly to plutocracy help to swell the oppressions 
of honest taxpayers, but income taxes and taxation of 
luxuries with the exemption of necessities to the laborer 
would result in only a small fraction of the justice that 
must be done the mass of the people. This gain would be 
only temporary for as soon as the new order could be 
instituted just then would begin the process of reducing 
wages to a lower point, leaving labor but enough to live 
on under the change that made cheaper living possible. 



252 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

All workers need is the freedom to do. This they now 
have not. This they must have if labor is to reach a state 
of independence and self-reliance, if they are to escape 
serfdom. Workers would not contract with employers 
for dollar wages if land now idle could be by them used 
where two dollars a day could be earned. They would 
not work for two dollars if by self-employment they could 
earn three. Dependence for employment and therefore 
wages, and because of wages dependence for subsistence, 
on monopolizing and restrictive capital places labor at 
the mercy of capital, gives labor a complete master in all 
departments of life. All forms of capital except such as 
embrace monopolistic features are hampered by the same 
law of control on the part of monopoly. Capital that does 
not include the office of monopoly or come within the mo- 
nopoly ring is as defenseless and as mercilessly consumed 
of monopoly as is labor. This state jeopards the stability 
and integrity of the entire industrial plan. Absolute 
power over labor is the position capital holds in a system 
making possible the private monopolization of wealth re- 
sources. Absolute power by one class is dangerous in 
any state of society. This has been the mistake of past 
societies. Private ownership of the sources from which are 
supplied the necessities of physical life will result in injury 
to the physical well being of all coming under these pro- 
visions as the desire for gains prompts the holders to 
manipulate their control to the most self-advantageous 
ends. Through injury to the physical will come injury 
in all the higher forms of life in man. There are some 
avenues to wealth and freedom that must be made a 
common right if prosperity in all desirable forms and 
with all classes of society is to be reached. The national- 
ization of land with the equalization of opportunities that 
would result therefrom would level the strong tower of 
class interests. Popular control of all avenues of transit, 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 253 

state or municipal control of light and water supplies and 
the control of all necessities of a social nature that all 
may receive the highest benefit at the lowest rates seem 
no more than the common due. Seem no more than 
equality. The comfort and enlightenment of the people 
are obligations of organized society which cannot with 
justice be entrusted to the control of private interests, 
being too opposite to the gains of those private interests. 
Control of the tools is control of the man who must use 
the tools. In the providence of God no man is born the 
industrial master of another. In the laws of man no such 
provisions should find place. 

This idea, when it is not called by harsher names, is 
sometimes called paternalism. It may be paternalism 
if you have no truer, juster name whereby to desig- 
nate it. It is not favoritism. If it be paternalism 
that much and often illy applied word is the expres- 
sion of a condition of truth in industrial relations 
seldomly accredited to it. This is the kind of paternalism 
that would be acceptable, the fatherliness of governmental 
authority that says, — My children, share in the bounties 
and opportunities I provide; a republican brotherhood 
where no primogenitural laws of legislative favoritism 
grant the wealth and privileges to one out of many. 

Evolutionary science takes much satisfaction in con- 
templating the survival of the fittest. Evolutionary 
science in distortion is a boon to millionairism. Any doc- 
trine which of itself or in distortion would go to show that 
whatever is is right unmodified would have millionairism 
under bonds of gratitude to it. But millionairism should 
reflect that in the process of evolution one stage is not 
lasting, that each must pass to make room for that which 
is to succeed. So when the order comes for millionairism 
to pass it cannpt stay ; as a phase in social evolution it has 



254 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

nearly accomplished its work and the time ripens for its 
departure and the succession of another phase. What 
apparent hindrances are really helps, preparing society 
for a great move forward when the obstacles are over- 
come, cannot be determined. How much evolution as a 
fact in social science is to be considered is not proven. 
The happy feature of optimism in the nature of man 
would hail it here as elsewhere. What society would do, 
what might have been done by now, to what point nearing 
perfection the race might have grown had not injustice 
been given so large a place in social schemes and con- 
sidered the traveling companion of the race, evolutionary 
nor any other science does not venture to inform us. In 
perversion of the science injustice is made a part of the 
evolutionary plan. 

The marvelous development of society in late years, 
evidences of which we see in the social surroundings and 
the social state to-day, shows a rapidity of movement and 
change which threaten universal disorder if the tendencies 
be not conducted aright, if too many obstructions to the 
right course be placed in the way. The opposition to 
moneyed monarchism in government is far distancing leg- 
islation. Rapid evolution, rapid development of social de- 
mands must be responded to by rapidity in all movements 
of social enterprise and response to demands or clashes 
will follow. If this rapidity be directed in lines dangerous 
to the public good, the danger is great. To avoid this, 
change in condition satisfying change in demand must 
keep pace. Centralization and anarchy are the two ex- 
tremes in government as private monopolization and com- 
munism are extremes in economic distribution. All 
tendencies toward complete centralization by plutocracy 
will be met by anarchistic tendencies on the part of the 
extreme at the other end of the political order. Again 
we find in this extreme weighing against extreme, a tiec- 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 255 

essary balance. The middle, logical and safe ground be- 
tween two such thoroughly antagonistic extremes will 
be found in a more complete democracy with equalizations 
of opportunities for all and special privileges to none. 

Many have pointed out that the growth of capitalism 
in proportions and in its centralizing and autocratic ten- 
dencies has been of but few years ; that never in the an- 
nals of associated mankind was a power so potent in 
influence sprung from incipiency to mature stages in so 
brief a period. None of these have found the influence 
of this power to have but one aim, either in the past or 
present. There are few who cannot see that capitalism 
as developed in our midst and under our partially repre- 
sentative institutions is fatal to the interests of all but 
capitalism. Rapidity of growth here must be met with 
equally prompt action on the part of those who suffer 
from it, and who would maintain the integrity of our in- 
stitutions, sometimes spoken of as free. 

The outward expression of the spirit of liberty, forever 
in the hearts of men, as instanced in our peculiar social 
state, has given to labor a restrictive and dictatorial posi- 
tion relative to capitalism that makes it easy to control 
to the good of all. But only the right application of this 
power will result in good. Social evolution presents the 
statement that the power of franchise was granted by the 
so-called powerful classes to the commonalty through the 
leveling effects of altruism. Whatever may have been the 
immediate cause of such a granting history seems to show 
that it was less a gift than a taking. By what cause physi- 
cal or moral, there has ever been a powerful class com- 
posed of one man in a thousand has not been made clear. 
Classes have in the past and do to-day exert influences 
far beyond the proportion of their number or worth. Yet 
that they exercise this strength by virtue of any inherent 
or any but an usurped and uncontested authority is a point 



256 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 






beyond support. No class, no man, has a right to dictate 
or control the acts of others. They have not the power 
beyond that delegated by those for whom and over whom 
control is exercised. Societies delegate to certain men 
power of protection, power to make laws, to others the 
office of explaining laws, to others the enforcement and 
punishment for violations. The power is purely repre- 
sentative and is subject to recall by those granting it. No 
political or social power inheres in one class above that 
inhering in another class of like number and no authority 
so inheres. The isolated human unit must govern himself 
by the best that is in him; the social body composed of 
units must govern themselves by the conference of wis- 
dom, a stated plan of prohibitions of acts unfit. The best 
in the social body restrains that which is not so good. 
The good being not enjoined but left to individual devel- 
opment and pursuit, the laws of societies abound in limi- 
tations of acts which would be found harmful to the 
commonwealth. 

The right of franchise the so-named powerful classes 
did not so much grant as the awakening manhood of an 
increasing civilization laid hold of and exercised. The 
power of ballot was demanded by the rights of man and 
the forces of altruism working in the minds of those de- 
prived and held back from its exercise, as greatly as the 
same forces influenced those who had to that time em- 
ployed and enjoyed it exclusively. Altruism does not 
beggar those influenced by it. It compels man to exercise 
his own rights as much as it compels him to concede the 
rights of others. To improve the social condition the unit 
with the ambition must first improve self, for good is not 
bestowed or drawn out by evil, wisdom by ignorance, in- 
dependence by servitude. As it was with ballot power, 
so is it with all rights of humanity. Right is might ever 
and is not forever to be withstood. If the power-exercis- 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 257 

ing classes of all civilizations had persisted in restricting 
and denying the rights of humanity to a voice in govern- 
ment and the disposition and adjustment of political and 
social forces, the progress of the race would have been of 
a less steady order. Usurped power would have held 
sway longer, but its overthrow would have been more 
complete when once the ranks had been parted by the 
onset of the masses, and civilization perhaps have been as 
much advanced toward the final goal, even though repre- 
sentative governments were yet in the future. Civilization 
has many things to accomplish yet. The longer resist- 
ance is maintained against a presented claim, so much 
more rapid will be the progress when resistance is over- 
come. Development has been in mankind, not in a class. 
A growth in the apprehension of rights is likewise uni- 
versal. Of this growth comes a division of powers and 
responsibilities. 

The present position of labor toward capitalism, the 
position of the masses toward the classes, dictatorial and 
restrictive, clearly as determined in their way as are the 
few in theirs, is but an added growth of the same knowl- 
edge of rights inhering in all. These rights are asserted 
by the ballot, but the assertion is no more the result of the 
ballot exercise alone than is the fruit in vegetable life the 
result of the flower alone. The vigorous forces making 
up the life and throwing out the bud, then the flower, and 
at last the fruit, has given us the one as the other, in 
the realm of each. Ballot power would be ineffective of 
itself ; is not, at times, directly effective, as we have seen. 
A greater than ballot power is necessary. It is the de- 
mand for right and the determination to win and hold it, 
back of the franchise expression of power that calls forth 
successive steps in the emancipation of the race, and the 
freeing of the laborer follows, he that has been since the 
earliest light of history's showing, the lordling's slave. 
i7 



258 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

It is the intrepidity of social forces occasioned by the 
necessities of man that carries on the bulk of humanity 
toward a level of economic and social equality. Political 
equality is but the husk to social equality. But political 
equality with rights of exercise so far from being be- 
stowed by the free grace of the classes, is an outgrowth 
of the powers that in the heart of man struggle towards 
equality in all spheres of the social universe. 

We of the present generation have to do with the pres- 
ent. A well-guarded present gives assurance of a more 
equitable future. It may be said w T ith all respect to 
sciences dealing with the future of the race, that we live 
now. In a thousand years from now there will be those 
of whom the same may be said and to them will be pre- 
sented the Sphinx-riddle of their success individually 
and collectively. For themselves will they answer it as 
best they can. The good we can bequeath them we share 
in now and the best we can do for them is the doing of the 
best w r e can for ourselves. The struggle for continuation 
brings truth to light and makes easy successive stages 
of just living. 

Progress has been made. There is a liberty for the 
majority of mankind which eases greatly the gall of 
oppressions and leads to broader realizations of the bless- 
ings liberty has to bestow. Not that the mass of humanity 
has shared with more than a shadow of equality in the 
goods of temporal use brought forth, but there is a grow- 
ing consciousness of power and self-sufficiency to redress 
and cancel wrongs that relieves much of the distress pre- 
vailing in the great mass of people. If this is not true 
both nature and the evolutionist have made a mistake, 
the one in acting, the other in tracing the course of action. 
If this is not true the continuation of the social state is 
a farce in all but the expressions of grosser selfishness 
and ethical insufficiency of the race. Unless they fit 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 259 

human kind for more advanced, more delicate responsi- 
bilities, and inculcate in human nature and energy 
stronger agencies for social control and moral growth, 
the social sciences are a dead-letter and their theories 
ridiculously pretentious of discoveries of facts, so-called, 
that have no existence and no foundation. If the evo- 
lutionist has the truth, the race is better fitted now than 
ever before to enthrone right as the sole monarch in the 
realms of society. 

The working out, promotion and bequeathing to suc- 
ceeding generations of equality conditions and precedents 
of equalizations as occasions arise, is the ever-present 
duty and social task presented to mankind. The upward 
step to-day lifts society to a height from which successive 
elevations are more easily gained. 

A closer drawing together of economic interests is 
rendered inevitable by the workings of that human bond 
of responsibilities that considers the higher good of one 
and all. Isolation in a social sense is impossible. Indi- 
vidualism of the isolated type cannot exist in the economic 
life of a civilized state. Individualism is the sacred prin- 
ciple of human responsibility to self, of worth to society, 
but the responsibility and worth of the unit lay the only 
sure base of a humane and rational social organization. 
Man as a unit has ceased to live to himself and ceased 
also to die to himself ; he has become a part of the social 
body. His interests are society's, society's interests are 
his. The union is not to be severed. 

The growth of economic intercourse, the progress in- 
troduced by inventions affecting production, communica- 
tion and transportation unite the community, the state, 
and are approaching the unity of the world. The growth 
of trade and the arts constantly intensifies the conditions 
of interdependence, world-reaching. By their progress the 



260 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

old world and the new, the southern and northern zones 
are brought into relations vital to their continuation and 
progress in the highest sense. To preserve the progres- 
sion no class of men are to be set aside in the consideration 
of laws as a part of a great machine, inferior to any other 
part, or to the whole. Weakening one class weakens the 
entire mass. The farming element, the mining, all, are 
composed when separated into distinctive groups of those 
who hold opportunities and those who hold them not. In 
each branch of industry the single idea of production 
animates all, for upon production depends life and pros- 
perity for all in the class, and indirectly, the rest of the 
economic world. Neither are men in the consideration 
of laws to be grouped into the two classes composed of 
capital and labor. The capitalist is a unit in society. The 
laborer is a unit in society. Both are entitled to the fruits 
of their labor. Both must be held equally valuable in the 
industrial scheme as developed. The equalization of op- 
portunities and freedom of application, the securing of the 
control of products to each individual in each class are the 
rights he is entitled to as a member of an economic society. 
The rights of the individual are not transcendent to 
the rights of society ; they are co-equal with those rights 
so long as the exercise of the individual right does not 
cause suffering to another member or members of society. 
So it is a self-evident truth that when corporations or 
business concerns are granted certain powers, the proper 
discharge of which forwards the happiness and prosperity 
of society, they should be obliged to conduct their busi- 
nesses in a manner to forward the good of the people con- 
cerned or forfeit the opportunity. In such a business, as 
a part of the general welfare they are bound to promote 
is included with public service a proper wage rate to em- 
ployes for a reasonable service. This is the only disposi- 
tion of these relations that will stand between us and 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 261 

socialism of a more pronounced type. Man's acts, in 
the complexity of our economic life are so fraught with 
importance to his fellows that conditions leading to fric- 
tion, constant variance and disorders must be superseded 
by conditions making for peace and the even discharge 
of all obligations of society. 

A few captains of industry have realized this condition, 
led thereto by the necessities imposed by justice. The 
number of employers adopting the profit-sharing idea 
is not legion but sufficient to prove the practicability of 
the scheme. These noble exemplars of a better order 
have shared with their fellow-men, their workers, so 
evenly the vicissitudes of commercial ebbs and flows that 
in the burdens imposed by "hard times" they have un- 
flinchingly stood by the purpose, at a loss to themselves 
rather than gain, that the workers might not bear the full 
loss. That the workers may share in prosperity and sus- 
tain only a relative loss in depressed periods is the true 
bond with which to unite the industrial classes. The 
true labor captain who fares with his workers, by his 
brother to brother kindness, man to man treatment, did 
the world and world's workers but know it, has the 
method whereby to settle many of the labor agitations, 
diseases and languishments increasing in our midst. 
Without a fairer manner of adjusting the relations of the 
economic classes, nothing good can come, much that is 
evil will result. Under the shadow of monopolization 
a competitive system will compete itself to death without 
a salt of cooperation. While the strong continue to eat 
the weak no strength can come to our people ; fool policy 
and knave practice it is to attempt a settlement and com- 
promise of difficulties and questions vital to our national 
stability by passing laws of meaningless purpose where 
downright injustice is escaped, or passing resolutions of 



262 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

respect for the weak ones who are eaten. Yet we do less 
than this for the weak oftener than we do more. 

The future good of society demands a change in the 
prevailing order. The present demands it; but the im- 
mediate future of this generation is in less danger than 
its close. Every day darkens with less opportunities for 
the laborer than its dawn witnessed. The fierce com- 
petitive system we endure presses with constantly in- 
creasing severity, making the equalization of production 
and distribution more widely divergent, rendering ex- 
tremes of wealth and poverty more broadly separated, and 
but for the tendencies already noticed, more hopelessly 
separated. It prompts the growth of those sentiments of 
hatred and rivalry which sets citizen at variance with 
citizen as economic interests dictate. It presses down 
mercilessly on the body of unfortunates crowded into a 
field of lessening opportunities where rages competition 
for employment upon any terms. It tramples down be- 
yond the hope of elevation multitudes who struggle in the 
lower ranks where the question of personal survival be- 
comes the only motive of existence. 

As in chemistry the union of untried agents will some- 
times produce destructive powers, so in our composite 
national character are there the elements of unknown re- 
sults. We are working for the union of unlike forces and 
the final result does not yet appear. 

The case is peculiar in that we have followed the path 
of the past maintaining that it will lead to a state hitherto 
unreached. The forces entering into our national life are 
peculiar in themselves. We have taken these forces and 
are trying to fuse them into a similarity to other national 
conditions while we profess superiority in method and 
result. A comprehensive summing of our case may be 
fairly made in the statement that we have abused the 



OUR PECULIAR CASE 263 

greatest privilege ever granted a people. We were given 
a blank page in history and we have stained it with a 
record of the same errors other nations have committed. 
We might have commenced free and remained free but 
we chose the bondage of the wrongs common to societies. 
The wealth and means to wealth have become centralized 
as in the past; political rights, while intact in theory, in 
truth have almost ceased. Our government is no longer a 
government for, of and by the people. It is a government 
of the people, by and for the benefit of plutocracy. Class 
interests dominate; the victory in each struggle is not to 
the numerically strong but to the financially strong. 
Equality in all spheres of life has grown to be a catch 
word of meaningless sound and justice in actuality a 
receding memory. But the case is not hopeless for 
enough in spirit and tradition remains to the American 
heart to furnish the outline of a hope for a glory greater 
than we have dreamed in the day of experimentation 
working failure. The wisdom these failures can be made 
to yield us provides the assurance of their non-repetition 
in the future by those who would build an enduring state, 
through struggles and shifting fortunes, without the 
bruising and buffeting of the common people. 

The victory is to those who trust themselves. Capital- 
ism, oppressing wealth powers, may be under the beautiful 
influences of altruism and humanitarianism in theory 
and sentiment. The present witnesses the lack of practical 
control by these forces. This is not strange for in the 
sway of one-sided competition how hard it is for the 
Ethiopian to change his skin, how impossible for the 
leopard to change his spots ! There are blessings which 
cannot be entrusted to even friends for preservation, 
which it is destruction to trust to the keeping of a class 
whose similar interests are in the nature of a direct op- 
position. The masses of people will enjoy such all-em- 
bracing liberty as they themselves assert and maintain. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DISTRIBUTION. 

If all our workers were employed in their chosen work 
and all kept busy a reasonable number of hours six days 
in the week, every week in the year, and all eaters of food 
and wearers of clothes and users of tools were fed and 
clothed and armed for work, we would not then have 
mounted into view of the impossible, and not even the 
wonderful. But what, to the thinking of some who have 
essayed to speak on the subject would be equally as mar- 
velous as either, would be the natural. We would have 
reached such a state. Alarming as such necessity may 
appear to these, this state must be reached and held if 
we go not to economic despotism or its antithesis, an- 
archism. 

Overproduction! is the cry when business stagnates, 
wage-paying industries shut down and the bread earner 
finds his occupation gone and no other to take its place. 
Overproduction, — when the value-of-product worker finds 
his offerings to the sum of wealth resting in profitless 
decay on his hands or sold at prices ruinous to himself. 
Overproduction, — and property being mortgaged and 
homes lost in sacrifice to the demands of interest. Over- 
production, — with goods in warehouses, food in bins and 
the sufferer's pockets innocent of money with which to 
buy; farmers in need of the products of the shut-down 
and overstocked mills, mill workers in need of the 
farmer's store, and the great body of workers who belong 
to neither of these lists in need of both products. Over- 
production, — and men and women driven to suicide or 



DISTRIBUTION 265 

worse, lives of shame and anguish, a curse to themselves 
and a menace to society. Overproduction, and all this 
existing because the necessities of life are beyond com- 
mand by thousands. Where, in the Devil's name have you 
hidden your overproduction? By what spell of evil 
magic have you bound it to its place that it pass not 
around, gladdening the lives of men? If such a thing 
as a hampering, unused, supply in clothes and food exists 
there are hungry eaters for it and tattered wearers, 
crowded in rank alleys, sprawled in brutish abandon 
upon basement floors or huddled in pestilential attics, 
whole families, several families, young men and maidens, 
old men and children living in a single room in conditions 
that mock at modesty and laugh in the face of decency. 
These lives testify to no overproduction, but that of suffer- 
ing and woe and vice. These they exemplify sufficiently 
to convince all that there is an overproduction in results 
other than those held up with such persistency by the 
apologist. It is a half truth more false than any lie to 
say that there is an overproduction of those necessaries 
to the material comfort and happiness of humanity while 
we make and perpetuate situations that render it impos- 
sible for any to gain these necessities in a legitimate way. 
How to make a just distribution of the productions of 
labor is not nearly so hard a question to satisfy as the 
one that asks what is to result if this equitable distribu- 
tion is not made. The question of the past has too much 
been, how can we reward capital, and now adds to it that 
portion that never should have been lost sight of, — how 
can we with equal justice to all distribute the productions 
that are a result of the joint effort of labor and capital? 
The plans proposed by the friends of labor have ever 
a weakness — to capital, one that would render them totally 
unfit to effect desirable changes, in the judgment of capi- 
tal. That weakness is the provision that would force 



266 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the holders of capital and resources to share to a legiti- 
mate degree the results of production with the other 
factor to production, labor. Capital, in regulating distri- 
bution and proposing schemes for the same is too prone 
to entirely disregard the creative function of labor. 
Holders of natural resources have just one law for distri- 
bution and that law points the weakness of labor as com- 
petition for opportunity proceeds. That capital cannot 
continue without labor and that capital and resources 
are powerless of themselves is not considered by their 
holders and only the necessities of labor weigh in their 
estimate and fixing of a wage rate. All terms that 
come short of leaving the employers of labor in posses- 
sion of the entire product but enough left labor to make 
it productive, are to capital and monopoly, weakness, 
socialistic, anarchistic. How much a human being should 
be made to bear from those who profit by his existence, 
that the profit may be increased, is a wage rate labor's 
masters have not openly formulated. The rate governing 
their apportionments of rewards is twofold in action, 
operating from the two conditions of human existence 
and industrial organization; profitable because the num- 
bers engaged make increased production and economy 
possible, and as industrial relations have been developed, 
profitable by reason of the competition in labor markets 
that numbers create. 

So if labor finds employment in wage-paying concerns 
it is by the permission of capital influenced by the general 
industrial state. If labor receives value-of-products 
wages at rates at all beneficial, it is also by the general 
industrial state that it becomes possible. The key to the 
general industrial state is the degree to which labor is 
independent of monopoly in opportunities for production 
afforded by nature. The share of products left labor is in 
any industrial scheme, the total production minus what 



DISTRIBUTION 267 

capital and monopoly can take. How much this is will 
be measured by the degree to which monopolization of 
opportunities has proceeded and the degree to which 
capital has lost its legitimate calling in that of the monopo- 
listic. There are times and places making it possible for 
labor to receive back from capital and monopoly a larger 
share of products than is usually conceded as wages. 
These periods do not last, for as competition for oppor- 
tunity grows and the cause of the extraordinary demand 
falls off all wages fall back to the old average with a tend- 
ency to absolute decrease. When demand for a product is 
so great that the controllers of production will be doing a 
profitable business even though yielding to the demand 
for higher wages, labor will get a part of the modest in- 
crease asked. If a reaction follows and demand slackens, 
down goes the wage rate or the key is turned with labor 
on the outside of the places where wages are paid. 

Go to the squirrel for instruction, ye who have made 
political economy to be called the dismal science, ye who 
cannot discern the laws of a just distribution. He labors 
industriously in the season appointed for him. His wages 
are the nuts he gathers for his sustenance in the period 
which does not furnish food for him. These products 
of nature become his by that feature to completed produc- 
tion which we call transportation and storage for use. 
Nature has accomplished her part, the squirrel his. If 
there be inhabiting the same tree another squirrel which 
has garnered more than he requires of hazel nuts and less 
than he finds he wishes of hickory nuts and the first squir- 
rel has more hickory nuts and less hazel nuts than he 
wants, an exchange profitable to both may be effected. 
If the one finds he can gather hazel nuts with more ease 
and rapidity and the other finds he can so gather hickory 
nuts, a partnership of exchange in the future may be 
established by them for mutual benefit. But if a third 



268 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

squirrel sets up a claim to the tree in which they lodge 
and another claims the hazel bushes and a syndicate unite 
to seize the hickory trees the profit they found in mutual 
labors would be dissipated as rents. For the tree in which 
they live being claimed they would have to pay rent for 
their home; the hazel bushes being claimed they would 
have to give another per cent, of their wages for the privi- 
lege of gathering; the hickory trees being claimed they 
would have to give another per cent, for the privilege 
of gathering hickory nuts. They would find longer hours 
of work necessary to satisfy the demands of rent and the 
partnership which seemed such a good thing for them 
would be found later to benefit the rent receivers as all 
the opportunities of life became monopolized and they 
were compelled by the power of monopolizers to pay all 
that they could earn above what would sustain life. 
Such is the picture of society where monopolization of 
natural forces is a part of the industrial plan. But the 
squirrel is wiser than we for he gathers and stores where 
he will and his wages are high or low as his own industry 
and ability determine. Go to the bee for a lesson, ye who 
have said we are established in this way and cannot de- 
part from it. They who work not in the colony of workers 
are not suffered to continue. They are cast out, even 
stung and cast out, that their idleness and improvidence 
may the sooner meet a natural fate. The wisdom of the 
squirrel and the bee teaches them a truth mankind has too 
much rejected, from which rejection comes complications 
without number, sorrows from which we cannot escape 
until we have learned a wisdom from that of the squirrel 
and bee. 

The genesis of the tramp is in striking similarity to 
that of the millionaire. In developments and rewards there 
appears a difference. In the beginning a multitude of men 



DISTRIBUTION 269 

are looking for a treasury that carries with its possession 
the right to travel along a certain road and collect gold 
coins dropped by travelers who precede the treasury 
bearer. The treasury being discovered by one of the mul- 
titude, the lucky man at once sets off along the road, the 
previous traveling of which makes rich to him. Many of 
those who were searching, perhaps all the rest, begin to 
follow the treasury bearer in the hope that some of the 
coins may again fall to the ground and become theirs. 
They have not thought that the road is open to all, and 
the treasure which is provided by their fellow-creatures 
as much the riches of one as another according to the 
diligence with which they search. They have accepted 
a tradition which says that the treasury finder may have 
all the gold. Since they must have gold to pay their own 
toll over the highway, some agree to carry the treasury, 
others to pick up the money pieces for a very small share 
of them. Those in the van and near to the treasury get 
a comfortable portion of the pieces and praise the treasury 
holder and support the tradition. The followers in the 
rear find scanty stores because the numbers thronging 
around the treasury keep the ground well cleared. They 
murmur at their share, but many do not question the 
holder's right, for the well-paid attendants tell them that 
it is the only safe way the coins can be collected and kept. 
But a few whom tradition has not blinded, scattered here 
and there in the van, the central and rear forces, counsel 
the multitude to take possession of the treasury in joint 
ownership and credit each man with the amount he col- 
lects, arranging that the head become the rear, the cen- 
tral head, and the rear central in orderly succession at 
prescribed times that all have an equal chance to collect 
the riches. At this the treasury holder and they to whom 
he gives more coins from what the throng gathers, set up 
a great cry. The advocates of the equal order are de- 



270 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

clared to be overturners of justice, breakers of the images 
of the true gods and the people are frightened into turning 
away from the common advocates ; for who, says the 
holder and his supporters, will pay you wages if the 
treasury holder has the treasury taken from him, who 
will keep the treasure if it be denied the one who has 
always had it? So the multitude rejoice as they are bid- 
den over the rich treasury for they are taught that wealth 
to look great must be in a heap, and that it would destroy 
wealth to take from a pile a million dollars and place 
them in a thousand groups of a thousand dollars to each 
group. And they follow the treasury in the same old way, 
weary and faint. There is plenty of money but it is kept 
in the treasury or sparingly scattered at times by order of 
the holder that the multitude act not upon the advice of 
the advocates. Many find it impossible to pick up enough 
for their needs and as the supply grows less until it 
reaches the vanishing point, great numbers drop away, 
seeking other roads. The multitude of men thronging 
the road finding less coins dropped by their predecessors 
(because they who precede were also stripped in contri- 
butions to their treasury), bid against each other for the 
Work of carrying the treasury and by reason of the com- 
petition the holder is able to get it carried for fewer coins 
and because men will carry it for little he can demand a 
larger share from those who collect. Many more are 
driven away from the road or are dependent upon the 
generosity of those who can command some of the gold. 
They wander here and there, importuning food, clothes, 
shelter. We call them tramps and put them into ball-and- 
chains, setting them at various occupations. Their con- 
dition is the complement of the millionaire condition. Of 
a given amount of any substance to be owned by eight 
men, if one man owns a half and three own the rest, four 
men will be left without. The millionaire is an economic 



DISTRIBUTION 271 

monstrosity, the tramp an economic abortion delivered 
of the same industrial matrix. 

The cast-off employe or the unemployed having nothing 
better to do, joins our moving army whose recruits in- 
crease year by year, marching under the command of 
Want against the common enemy Hunger. It is hard for 
misery to stand still, in resignation to starvation or alms ; 
there is a possibility of work, of living by some method 
less distasteful than a sit-down policy looking to charity 
for sustenance, a donothingism that negatives the hope 
of something better. So he takes to the road and our 
aptness at fitting terms dubs him a tramp. 

Broad prairies, miles of rich farm land unused or partly 
used, acre after acre of valuable suburban tracts, lot after 
lot of precious city space vacantly staring in the face of 
heaven as in protest against neglected possibilities, he 
trudges wearily by. He has not the ground on which to 
raise the simply cultivated vegetables that would feed his 
starving family. What is to prevent the homeless, hope- 
less -tramp from going over the line to possess it ? There 
it lies useless, no one reaping from it, no one sowing it to 
a harvest. Give him as much as he alone can cultivate, 
and he will feed himself and nine others equally as desti- 
tute. Or he, if his meanderings lead him to the regions 
where such abound, passes idly before factories whose 
smokeless chimneys speak to him in a language well 
known in these days. Coal, and mines of other minerals, 
unworked, while he and thousands are in need of the 
riches these all were designed to supply. There they 
are, there is he, idle both, and the world wanting the pro- 
ducts of their united powers. Not of the tramp only is 
this main truth to be said; many who sit in idleness in 
the centers of population might be with profit to them- 
selves and society set to work or freed from the restraints 
that prevent their working. 



272 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

It would be both charitable and wise for the tramp to 
give his idle existence a motive, to help bestow relief upon 
his suffering fellow-creatures. Why don't they go to 
work and earn a living like honest men, is an irrefutable 
argument and complete settlement to many minds when 
disposing of the tramp irritation. Infantile curiosity lead- 
ing to helpless surprise hopefully expressed. The easy 
solution — shops shut and wage-paying industries of all 
kinds closed or crowded by throngs who appeal for work, 
operated by hungry men who are tenacious of their places 
on the lowest of living wages, land held at impossible 
rents or for purely speculative ends. Ay, why don't they 
go to work? All-important question and one that will 
suggest itself and be asked again, perhaps many times, 
before all will learn that men must have something more 
than two hands and a willing mind with which to perform 
a work. Arrests, imprisonments, various punishments 
have been resorted to as a compelling means to make men 
work when all the tools but hands and mind have been 
withheld. 

Surely, since by the sweat of his brow man must earn 
bread, the tramp ought to go to work and earn an honest 
living. And for other reasons strong as this — before he 
like his opposite has become confirmed in his present 
manner of life, making a living by honest work distasteful 
to the degree of repugnance to the tramp as well as to 
the millionaire; before he suffers with the other that 
change of nature that makes one shun the towns that 
keep the stone piles and the other resist with all powers 
those changes in policy that would cause him to relin- 
quish a share of his advantages. 

What is to hinder the wanderer in possessing and living 
by the land no other person seems to have any use for? 
Question naturally suggesting itself, the answer following 
with like naturalness. He is prevented by the will of his 



DISTRIBUTION 273 

late employer or some other one of body of speculating 
monopolizers who are keeping back this land from use 
until the needs of humanity compel payment of the price 
that has been set upon it, or the same cause forces the rent 
money its holders have determined upon before they will 
permit this land to contribute its share toward the sup- 
port and comfort of the children of men. How they come 
into this power over this element is easier seen than 
rationally accounted for. When pressed, the question is 
answered in equivalent if not directness, that they have 
bought it. Bought it! Those who suffer because they 
may not use land would be pleased to know of whom it 
was bought. Of the more than seventy million human 
souls held in this land, whose heritage we call it, and who 
knew no more of such a transaction as this buying is 
called, with a few exceptions, than those who died a thou- 
sand years ago ? By what acclamatory consent, verbal or 
otherwise, did you who bought the land, by what sort of 
real bargaining did you become acquainted with their 
valuation of the land, and to whom did you pay the money 
for it ? These are questions you would do well to answer 
before you say you bought land. A fig for such a title 
were your right to it to be questioned by a power that 
could discern between good and evil and to whom legality 
means more than a clerk's parchment. 

j 
The wealth of nations in unjust distribution has been 
the source of national weakness from time recorded. The 
opportunities for wealth gaining were unfairly distributed 
from the first or were concentrated to a class control by 
the operation of conquest and intrigue, so that the classes 
in subjection had nothing to hope for from the beginning. 
Hoping nothing, controlling nothing, they received 
nothing. 
18 



274 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Let us see how a nationalization of land would effect 
distribution in that stage of production which stops short 
of exchange. Leaving out capital in all monopolistic 
forms we will have capital in its rightful form which we 
call wealth devoted to the production of more wealth, 
such as industrial plants, tools of all kinds, in short, all 
products of man's labor. This form of wealth as dis- 
tinguished from natural wealth belongs to labor, as it is 
labor in manifestation. Labor has been applied to natural 
wealth and these are the results. There being none em- 
powered to tax labor for private gains, and the only pro- 
vision against absolutely free use of land being the gov- 
ernment tax on it, labor will be left in possession of the 
entire product minus this small requirement. In a virgin 
country this would leave wealth in the possession of 
creators, all incipient capitalists. As development pro- 
ceeded some of the laborers who by superior skill had 
amassed more wealth would devote their wealth to purely 
capitalistic purposes. One would erect machine shops, 
another flouring and canning mills, and so on until the 
needs of the industrial commonwealth had been met, each 
new need being satisfied as it became manifest. These 
capitalists would hire men to run the work of their various 
establishments. The wages they would give would hinge 
upon the ability to command wages elsewhere. Land is 
free to be used. Each laborer possesses the wealth he 
fashions, save the small amount required by government. 
Some of the land yields an increase, or wages, which we 
will call ten for we must have something upon which 
to base comparisons. The land yielding ten is in use and 
employers will not have to pay ten for labor because labor 
cannot resort to the land yielding that. There is other 
land yielding eight but it is also being worked and as 
labor cannot by application to land command eight, em- 
ployers will not be forced to pay that much. But there is 



DISTRIBUTION 275 

land not in use which will yield six. This labor is free to 
use. Now, labor being free to employ self on land that 
yields six it is plain that employers in order to get men 
to operate their plants must pay six. For five men will 
not do the work as it is less than they will earn by self- 
employment. Seven the employer will not pay for men 
cannot earn seven on any land unused, therefore they will 
work for six and he must pay six to get his enterprise 
carried out. 

Now enters capital in its monopolistic character. A 
change is wrought in the control of land and by this 
change capital buys up the unused land. Labor does not 
buy; it uses. Capital, stored labor, buys in the sense that 
we buy land, while the act of labor or its exchange for 
acting does not enter so prominently into transactions. 
Capital by the purchase of land controls it afterward. 
Labor may not work on the land without paying capital 
a certain per cent, of produce which is called rent. Gov- 
ernment is demanding its share of the produce and since 
capital owns the land it can compel labor to pay both 
taxes and rent for the privilege of land use. If the private 
control of land is absolute, there is nothing to stay the 
downward wage drift, and it will decrease to the point 
beyond which labor cannot subsist. All above the point 
of subsistence can be claimed by capital and the effect 
on distribution will be to ultimately reduce all workers 
on lands yielding commercial rent to the line of sub- 
sistence while those who control land will be able to com- 
mand all beyond this that is produced on such land. But 
the monopoly form of capital does not cease in effects 
here. While it cannot force labor to a point of reward 
beyond that of subsistence it effects a class not employed 
on monopoly held lands and not engaged in capitalistic 
enterprises. There is a class of producers who are em- 
ployed on their own land and others who seek to enter 



276 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

various industrial fields; these are the special prey of 
monopoly-capital. Capital in this form gets a grant of 
land, lays a railroad and transports products. Over and 
over again, as in our country, these road freights are so 
manipulated that producers discriminated against are 
driven out and concentration of business control carrying 
concentration of wealth follows. Capital in the form of 
joint partnership buys, let us say, a half dozen sugar 
plants. Leaving out the consequential item of railroad 
discriminations this partnership possesses obvious ad- 
vantages over competitors. The legitimate profits on six 
plants operated by a company would make possible 
manipulations in prices that would force out others ; many 
would be squeezed out, others would sell out at a sacrifice 
to the monopoly-bent organization. With increased 
powers for competition the next turn of the thumb-screws 
would cause the surrender of stronger concerns until a 
trust in sugar supplies would be the logical result of re- 
peated operations of this kind. In this way is the wealth 
distribution affected again. Add to the monopoly of land 
the power of capital in monopolistic form and to these two 
the discriminations of a protective tariff, we have the 
sum of forces in basis and development that makes wealth 
to desert producers and flow to monopolizers. 

Under the first industrial scheme monstrously unequal 
distribution could not result. There is a margin left for 
labor by the freedom to use land. Where land is taxed 
for government use its monopolization cannot result for 
possession would necessitate use to meet the tax laid by 
government on land having a commercial value. So 
speculation would be destroyed and the land would be 
taken up and used as men needed it. Being taxed only 
on land for government expenses, labor would enjoy all 
but the smallest part of what it produced. The personal 
wealth of every laborer in the land would be measured 



DISTRIBUTION 277 

by the amount of skill and industry entering into efforts. 
If none are permitted to take toll from the product the 
producer will have it all. If a laborer produces twenty 
and government requires one he will have nineteen left 
for his own use. If a laborer produces twenty and gov- 
ernment requires one and monopoly fifteen the laborer will 
have four left for his own use. The proposition scarcely 
needs development to carry proof. The laborer will have 
such portion of his products as is not taken from him. 

i 

Our constitution, if worth the paper on which it was 

written, guarantees or provides for the guarantee to all 
of equal rights in the good the land might be made to be- 
stow, with the result, as we see, of these goods being 
monopolized and used as the source of personal enrich- 
ment and means of power over those who do not share in 
them. i 

The working of the English land system may be taken 
as the pattern of our own. While the right to land re- 
mained with the people of that island prosperity in a rela- 
tive degree was common to all classes. If accounts be 
worthy, five hundred years ago the distresses now cramp- 
ing thousands of English lives were not known. Increase 
in population to the degree of overpopulation cannot be 
said to cause this any more than overpopulation can be 
claimed as the cause of suffering in this country. Good 
lands lie unused and the aid of the best tools has made 
increased production per laborer possible. Five hundred 
years ago the aids to production had not appeared, and 
because transportation facilities were lacking a famine 
in one part of the island caused great suffering through 
the inability of the stricken dwellers to procure supplies 
abundant in other parts of the land. But each had a right 
to land and was able in normal seasons to produce food, 
and privations were the exceptional experience of a few, 



278 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

not the continual experience of a large class. With the 
land passing into control by private owners disappeared 
the freedom of land use and appeared the order of de- 
pendents waiting on the pleasure and profit of landed pro- 
prietors. With this appeared also a lower economic order. 
Not the increased power of producers as found in the 
use of implements and transportation means could 
preserve common prosperity. The land, the force upon 
which labor is exerted in production of wealth, has been 
denied their use. Of what avail then are all the tools a 
land can hold; what railroads, canals, wagon roads arid 
ocean steamship lines? They all make it possible for 
landholders to get more rent from a few tenants. They 
increase productiveness of that few but they do not help 
him who cannot claim land. 

Nowhere in the known world has the land been 
wrenched from the people with a more ruthless determina- 
tion than in this country. Our following of land customs 
that have in other countries wrought ruin may be set down 
as a forerunner of the helpless condition American classes 
will be found to occupy if this order is left to work out its 
natural results. Land rights constitute power. We can- 
not get away from the fact. They who control the land 
will control its profits. If land be monopolized the com- 
monalty will be subject to monopolizers and misery as 
surely result as that the land is held for profit and not for 
philanthropic purposes. 

Food and clothing we lack not ; nor of power and need 
to continue production do we lack. These are not the 
causes of want and idleness. What we do lack is a more 
just distribution of the products of labor; not as a gra- 
cious gift of charity, but as wealth left in the hands of 
producers as justice to those who create it. That is the 
poorest charity in the world, the most harmful enmity, 
which would keep men in idleness although every physical 



DISTRIBUTION 279 

want may be supplied. That is the broadest philanthropy, 
the justest state that makes exertion self-supporting, that 
makes self-support the necessity of all capable of exertion. 
These are the dues of every human being born into this 
world. Nature never, but perversions of her law and 
intentions only, designed one man to be a lordling and 
another the eater of charity's bitter bread. 

It is not a redistribution of existing wealth we need. 
The race, beginning any Monday morning with a fair dis- 
tribution, can create enough diverse wealth forms by 
Saturday night of the same week to warrant every one so 
disposed to take a holiday. Under present methods of 
distribution the holders of privileges alone could take a 
rest; workers would toil on for bread. Created wealth 
now in existence is representative of no more than our 
inequality of apportionment. It can be duplicated in half 
the time taken to accumulate it if labor should be 
unbound and equitable distribution assured. The redis- 
tribution of existing wealth would be a ridiculous attempt 
to right one blunder by the committal of another and such 
a misapprehension no longer exists in the thought of 
wealth holders who once feared such an end to be the aim 
of those who spoke in behalf of wealth producers. The 
futility of such a proceeding would equal its imbecility. 
The only distribution we need and the only one that will 
remedy existing inequalities is the leveling of obstacles 
that shut out willing hands from opportunities. With 
labor in a position to pursue industrial enterprises inde- 
pendent of wage-paying capital in its present monopolistic 
office, the stagnations and gluts common to our commer- 
cial life would be impossible. Why? Because in brief, men 
will work for the things they desire. And further, because 
each granted the control of self-created products, exchange 
would proceed as long as man continues to need the neces- 
sities, the comforts and elegances of life, which needs 



280 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

cease only with life. One generation melting impercep- 
tibly into the next, these needs would continue. They 
would increase as to quality with the increased ability of a 
higher life to supply these goods. The supply would re- 
spond to the demand with the exactity that would admit of 
no waste, no profitless labor. And again, because, labor 
freed from the purchasing limitations that must ever ac- 
company wage dependence, in different departments would 
demand and consume to the satisfaction of desires as they 
appear. There would be steady movement along all lines 
if those whose needs are constant could command, 
through any avenue of exchange, the goods their desires 
reach out after. A sweeping away of monopoly in 
natural resources would place labor in a way to defy all 
monopoly possible to be effected under the changed order, 
if any should remain possible. The increasing skill, the 
inventive powers of progressive man loosed from the 
bondage of hunger and the fear of want would place the 
race on altitudes which are beyond reach of oppression. 
A system governing distribution that would reward each 
in measure of worth to production is the industrial plan 
ideally just. 

It is the advantages we have given to some that make 
possible, by primary inequalities, followed by combina- 
tions, trusts and secondary monopolizations, the unequal 
distribution that entails so much injustice in social ranks 
and causes misery in the physical states of our kind. These 
difficulties and perplexing symptoms that have for their 
abolition and curtailment engaged so much attention, let 
us understand, are results, not causes of our unhealthy 
economic relations. Primary monopolization, as in land 
and the natural factors to life embraced in land, is the 
great cause from which all other monopolizations origi- 
nate and pattern. The truth of this is demonstrable to 
every one who will trace back a single secondary monopo- 



Distribution 281 

lization. Land, with its opportunities is at the founda- 
tion of all enterprise, and there is no coal trust possible 
without a private control of land that results, in effect, to 
monopolization. In such trusts the discrimination of 
railroads is an important factor, but railroads are also an 
outgrowth of land monoply. There is no trust, no com- 
bination, to-day draining the wealth of the people into the 
treasure chambers of oppression but is made possible and 
buttressed by the fact and effect of primary monopoliza- 
tion. Every such enterprise is receiving additional 
strength through the operation of laws granting special 
privileges to classes, granting immunities from the 
natural and rightful restrictions incident to a competitive 
system, and under a competitive system we are working 
in all but those exceptions made by monopolizations and 
specializations. Had not land been subject to monopo- 
lization these powers of secondary force would not have 
been able to gain an ascendency over the people and their 
interests. Equalization of land rights by the destruction 
of basic monopoly would raze the foundations of secon- 
dary monopolizations and render further efforts in these 
lines all but futile. 

Land area as an unimproved fact can do no more to 
right economic wrongs than the mere coinage of money 
makes money plentiful with the people. As money must 
be circulated, land rights must be seized and directed to 
the building up of a virtual commonwealth where wealth 
is common to the producer in the proportion of produc- 
tion. Land would be so used when restrictions to its 
enjoyment have been removed. The law of self-preserva- 
tion would act to establish a condition of industrial 
prosperity in the circumstances of all as it now acts to the 
perpetuation of existence by rivalries and one-sided com- 
petition that weakens the stability and power of the classes 
of labor. In the struggle for existence the common peo- 



282 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

pie will progress in the development of all the graces and 
virtues of civilization as the pressure on exertion for mere 
subsistence decreases. Economic equality, or the condi- 
tion to such, is at the foundation of a true social organi- 
zation. 

A rich man was asked by a beggar for a dime. Instead 
of the dime he gave him a generous amount of advice as 
to how he should go to work and earn an honest living 
and attain opulence "as I have done/' The rich man hav- 
ing discharged his obligation to the beggar, then went 
home to his luxurious and varied evening meal. After 
that he attended a ten-dollar opera where he exhibited 
evidences of his prosperity in jewels on the hands of his 
wife, around her neck and in her hair; he had the satis- 
faction of seeing his box pointed out ; he talked stock and 
other kindred topics with a friend and then again took 
his way to his home. In his sleep that night his stomach, 
or conscience, rebelled and the rich man had a dream, and 
his thoughts ran in this way : It seemed that the hap- 
hazard combination of circumstances he had theretofore 
denominated the wheel of fortune, which figure clearly 
represented his process of success, had performed another 
movement which left himself at the bottom, the beggar 
who had been refused alms, and the beggar at the top, the 
rich man who had said in a so self-satisfied way "as I have 
done." That is, the beggar had been able to grasp more 
land than those against whom he was struggling, had got- 
ten the ear of congress in behalf of his particular infant, 
and, as we say, had shown himself an all-around business 
man, and had, in short, been able to take and keep the 
advantage in every thing taken up. 

So the rich man was reduced to poverty and was forced 
to the necessity of work, — actual manual labor, the hardest 
part of which is the insecurity of place and the meager 



DISTRIBUTION 283 

wages. It was terrible to go back into that nightmare 
existence from which he had thought forever to escape. 
He gathered his family about him that he might realize 
the unhappy change and from their helplessness draw 
courage to nerve him for the future. The little ones were 
crying for food and on his wife's face was a look more 
maddening than reproach, more touching than tears. The 
beggar had told him a tale of like suffering, but that night 
he had been worried over an impending fall in stocks and 
had no sympathy or money to spare to wretched families 
of worthless spendthrifts whose capital is accounts like 
this. This came back to him now but he had no time for 
reflections ; he must look for work. He had an old com- 
rade, an extensive employer, to whom he would apply. 
The friend was stanch and he was given a place, — 
another man's place, but the pay was low for he knew 
nothing of the work and must begin by learning. He 
must look for another home, too, for the kingly place on 
the hill echoed to the contented laughter of the beggar's 
children, and the beggar's wife gave orders to his old 
servants and reposed amid the luxuriousness designed for 
another. He could not hope for much of a place, for rents 
consume and the little ones must have bread. A place 
was found ; it was poor and uninviting but the best he 
could command. The rent would make an appalling 
reduction from the amount of his wages but he was 
powerless. When he had investigated the locality and 
considered the number he found the building to be one he 
had owned in the days of his prosperity, but which was 
now owned by the beggar. The rent, true to its law, had 
advanced a little over what his last terms had demanded ; 
the increase was not great for the time had been short. 
He gathered his little and precious flock into their one. 
room where they could allow themselves only a handful 
of coal at sparing intervals, because the price of coal had 



284 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

gone up. The mining company of which he had been a 
member had elected the beggar president and through his 
efforts the combination the rich man had been negotiating 
was consummated, closing the mines until prices should 
advance through the needs of consumers. This, he found, 
increased the discomforts of coal consumers as well as the 
price of coal. He had not troubled himself about the 
first in days gone by. Being a man of experience and 
knowing how such things were done, he could not account 
for the full increase of the advanced price as the mine 
owners' profits and increased profits of the local dealers 
were more than represented by the raise in price to con- 
sumers. He was fully enlightened when he learned that 
the railroad company in which he once was a large stock- 
holder, and on whose board the beggar now figured as a 
director, had also effected a combination that raised rates 
which came out from consumer's pockets to increase the 
dividends of the company. He knew perfectly how this 
worked also but he was on the other side now, and it was 
his wife who was beginning to droop and it was his 
children who were beginning to show signs that should 
never be read on the faces of babes and men. 

By mid-winter the beggar's agent again advanced the 
rent rate. The railroad combination affected the price of 
food in the same way it had coal, and wheat speculators 
were at work. The infant industries of the country that 
had been tottering on the verge of dissolution for more 
than a hundred years had succeeded in raising a cry 
sufficiently loud to be heard in Washington and the pro- 
tecting arm of government was forthwith flung around 
them in the form of a tariff rate strong enough to enable 
them to compete against the Pauper Labor of Europe. 
The rich man groaned in his sleep. His children were 
hungry and their stockingless feet showed through the 
rags of shoes. His wife coughed more, but flannels were 



DISTRIBUTION 285 

out of the question. The last assault on the Pauper 
Labor of Europe would cost him at least a third more on 
every dollar's worth he bought; in the things his family 
most needed prices were doubled; he could not provide 
for them as he should — it was beyond his possibilities. 
He wondered if it were not more the pauper labor of 
America the strong classes somewhat feared and hated as 
they seemed determined to subjugate that body. Follow- 
ing this came the report of the commission sent abroad to 
get advice on monetary policy. The foreign powers 
deemed it advisable for us to lessen our money supply 
because cheap money attracts cheap money and our 
foreign advisers feared we might be swamped with an 
overproduction of money. So as we must crush the 
Pauper Labor of Europe we must propitiate the money 
powers of Europe, and in order to avoid the evils of 
abundant money the government decreased the volume 
by half. This had its natural effect on wages and business 
failures swept the country, throwing out workers and dis- 
organizing the industrial society. In his agony the rich 
man knew not which way to turn for relief. He only 
hoped for the future; he thought when spring came the 
discontinuation of the coal expense would leave enough 
beyond starvation to afford some of the dainties his wife 
so much needed; many hardships he could not relieve 
would decrease in severity with the coming of warm 
weather. He would throw open the one window of their 
wretched habitation and perhaps some of the blessed air 
of heaven would drift in, uncontaminated by their neigh- 
borhood surroundings; the sun would shine and a patch 
of sky could be seen from their window. These, only, of 
their former blessings could they now enjoy. Beyond 
the summer he did not dare look. He could only hope for 
better times for all unfortunates like himself, or as the 
more selfish, hope for advancement in position. 



286 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

A shut-down was rumored in the factory where he 
worked ; he was an operative in a diamond factory where 
the output was limited owing to various causes and the 
management were indignant that they were not remem- 
bered in the infant industry act, and as a cheap diamond 
like a cheap coat bespeaks a cheap man, they were almost 
tempted to the appalling revenge of committing the 
American public to the humiliation of dependence in this 
on the Pauper Labor of Europe. However, they thought 
better of it and concluded to let their infant totter on 
some more to see if its pitiable condition would not melt 
the stony heart of congress and hasten relief. The rich 
man breathed easier. Spring, with its promise of partial 
relief, was almost due. 

One night he heard a cry from a newsboy that filled 
him with a terrible fear. The boy in his haste to reach 
a customer standing on the platform of a street car just 
set in motion, dropped a paper. The rich man picked it 
up, the first daily he had touched since misfortune over- 
took him. The cause for alarm was real. The Greatest 
Inventive Genius of This or Any Age had at last suc- 
ceeded in perfecting his oxygen extractor and condenser 
and already sought a patent on his triumph. 

In less than ten weeks a company had been formed that 
supplied the appliances for every landholder in the coun- 
try. Clearly the air is an inseparable attendant of land, 
a land element, as is the spring of water from under the 
ground supplying another need of man, and science had 
at last made it possible for the landholder to claim his own. 

The unequal struggle could no longer be perpetuated. 
He was driven to a step from which his manhood revolted, 
but the class to which he now belonged had learned many 
bitter necessities, many duties to their beloved, duties 
humiliating and bitter beyond words. The rich man stood 
before the beggar, seeking an alms. His wife was dying 



DISTRIBUTION 287 

in soul-starvation and his love would ease her last days 
they were to spend together. His children were worse 
than dying for more room, more clothes, more food, more 
air, and his father-heart tore at his breast, his father-love 
cringed and surged before the picture of their bruised 
lives, unlightened by the faintest joy, the slightest justice. 
For her who had been faithful in all the changing features 
of their united life, he could rejoice that her bondage 
would be brief ; for her he sought only to be able to show 
the unspeakable favors that the strong bird shows its 
dying mate; with lovingest attention he would care for 
her, would bring her little luxuries in support of his tender 
words. But, his children would live! That, coupled with 
the prophecy of their future was the thought that stung 
until he writhed in agony of soul. He must provide relief ; 
surely, surely no man would deafen his ears to such a plea 
as his tormented love would make. — The beggar assumed 
an important manner and began to cite his own case, 
showing how easily success rewards those who avail 
themselves of the glorious privileges granted in this land. 
It was easy enough if men were diligent and economical ; 
he was one of many. "As I have done" — alas, those 
fateful words ! The rich man gave a mighty cry of des- 
pair and started to flee the presence of the man who spoke 
as he had spoken on a like occasion — and found himself 
sitting up in his own splenidly appointed bed. He gasped 
in relief and thankfulness, then sank easily back upon his 
pillows. A faint gray was discernible in the sky and a 
sleepy bird twittered from the branch of a tree nearby his 
window. He could not dare go back to sleep; the rest 
of the time until his usual hour for arising he spent in 
serious and concentrated thought. He was trying to 
recall the exact description of the oxygen extractor as 
given by the paper the newsboy had dropped. 



288 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Dives, clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptu- 
ously could have built a church, endowed a hospital or 
established a library if his taste had been for such, had 
such been the fashion, and still have had room at his gate • 
for Lazarus with permission of the medical attendance 
of dogs. Neither Dives nor Lazarus lost their reward, 
nor would have lost it otherwise. Dives' purple would 
have made a gorgeous pew upholstering and the price of 
one luxurious dish would have been sufficient to present 
the library with a rare volume, calling for fine phrases 
from the daily press and causing to appear apologists 
and eulogists without number. But had he done one or 
all of these generous acts, would not the money so ex- 
pended been more acceptable in Heaven's sight if it had 
been put to the ministry of comfort to the miserable beg- 
gar whom Heaven's Son came to redeem? Or been de- 
voted to the destruction of causes that so enslaved men? 
Read ye not your Book to the contrary, whether it be 
Bible, the Confucian testimonials, Veda, El Koran, or any 
other that to you embodies the great truth; if it be only 
the language of the true heart which says thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself, spurn not the message. Midas 
had gold and a soul ; the poorest man in his realm had the 
greater blessing. So have their kind of this day, but the 
gold weighs too much in our poor earth-poised balances. 
The Great Eye looks through the rags of one and the 
glittering apparel of the other into the real man. Looks 
through, I said. Brother, that Eye does not even see your 
cloth, but on the soul is fixed its constant light. In that 
same light is held a whole people and the trumpery of 
class- judged national honor and expediency does not so 
much as kindle a glance from it. Each man is held equally 
dear in that sight. Doubt this not. The doctrine it is 
attributed to may be old-fashioned and ye may regard 
its source as a myth. That weighs not, for all your 



DISTRIBUTION 289 

false beliefs and arguings to the contrary, there is justice. 
Whatever doctrine you may openly espouse in support 
of cause, read not your own soul falsely, but ask if the 
figure is not the grandest and truest the human mind has 
been called to consider, the bravest and most god-like the 
human mind is fitted to comprehend. If you are a true 
man you must confess, "It is, it is ; we are all brothers 
of a common family." And you will grant too, that man 
should not have the will, nor, safer yet, the power, to make 
his fellow mourn. 

Dives could have done all that any of his kind has done 
in a later day to make partial amends to a despoiled peo- 
ple, or he might have done as some of his descendants 
do in this day, simply tried to squander in selfish use the 
goods he had, — as in fact the picture seems to teach he 
did. In either case, if the people whose wealth he dis- 
posed of with so liberal a hand had found it compatible 
with their happiness to have the library, hospital or 
church, they could have erected these buildings and con- 
ducted their work with less expense by appropriating the 
money to that purpose without causing it to first pass 
through the hands of Dives. 

The picture of Dives and Lazarus is no caricature, no 
exaggeration of their classes to-day. It is a continuously 
reenacting relation. The lesson is obvious. Had Laza- 
rus grasped and exercised the right of ballot he would 
still have had to occupy his old quarters at the rich man's 
gate had he accepted the right of Dives to dictate his vot- 
ing. He might have found even this refuge closed to him 
had he traded his rights political and industrial for the 
promise of continued occupation. In either form of ex- 
change of vote for value received and in expectation the 
wish of Lazarus and his prosperity would have received 
the consideration which was their due, — which considera- 
tion under like forms of barter his kind meets in our day. 
19 



CHAPTER XII. 

INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED. 

Much might be said relative to the importance and wis- 
dom of a greater agrarian activity. The question is both 
humanitarian and commercial in bearing. If there are 
hungry stomachs in the remotest corners of earth, if 
poverty-stricken tenement dwellers pay out the life-bought 
pittance for a meager loaf, if children in the populous re- 
treats of idleness cry for food, there is occasion for 
increase of agricultural products. Not the fact that these 
products have gone begging in American markets in late 
years is any proof to the contrary. Rather that American 
consumers have been restrained by inability to buy is the 
consideration. It is not an oversupply of foods that 
causes profitless farming; it is not undersupply of foods 
that causes hunger. Acreage has not been lessened, labor 
in the fields has not slackened. Heaven has not withheld 
the rains, the sun, the increasing influences of air and 
earth that hunger should stalk through our land. Eaters 
have not gone into a voluntary fast that prices fall. Sea- 
sons of greatest agricultural supplies have been accom- 
panied by greatest destitution. Not the desolation of 
war could have exceeded the horrors of suffering in this 
way. With abundance of food in the land, cheaper than 
ever, the farmer could not sell because would-be con- 
sumers could not buy. No work was being done, no 
wages were being paid, no exchange marked the relations 
of the hosts of consumers whose labor must create goods 
to be exchanged for the farm's supplies. Each succeeding 
year increases the abnormal conditions save when an oc- 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 291 

casional turn in the drift lets the farmer and consumer 
rejoice in a fairly prosperous season for each. The forced 
surplus of foods seeking consumption abroad would 
vanish and agriculture on the present scale be set into a 
state of prosperity unexampled in years could American 
consumers demand the goods satisfactory to their natural 
desires. 

Since the prevailing agricultural depression set in, there 
have been at times as many as five million workers out of 
employment. If each worker represents three consumers, 
fifteen million, or one-fifth the population have been re- 
stricted in purchasing power in this way. Consumption 
by this number was diminished to a point where many 
failed to escape starvation. Others miserably existed by 
aid of charity or scantily subsisted on meager earnings 
of the past. The number of workers who continued to 
labor at reduced pay contributed by their lack of means 
to the erroneously designated condition named over- 
supply. This undersupply of purchasing power would 
account for a very considerable share in the price decline ; 
actual wage suspension is accountable for yet greater in- 
fluences. 

While corn continues to be planted and gathered men 
will be found to weave cloth, make shoes, to fashion all 
articles of civilized demands to exchange for it. While 
humanity continues to eat will be found men and women 
to give unflagging attention in pursuit of all industries 
that their wages, in what form soever, may buy the food 
necessary to continue life and make it energetic. There 
is no enmity between the different departments of indus- 
try. They are different members of an intricate whole, 
each indispensable and any undue or unnatural favoritism 
to one or drawing away from the other disturbs the exact 
harmony that must prevail if all are served in their best 
interests. Any national or law condition that makes it 



292 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

even possible for any to be idle and wretched unwillingly 
is thus harmful and unnatural. One that makes these 
states unavoidable to great numbers is monstrous. 

All have heard the doctrine that the man who does not 
work for a living is either a thief or a beggar — if he con- 
tinues to live. If he does not continue to live he is a 
deceased man of success, or haply, a dead pauper. If 
we have no respect for the teachers of this doctrine we 
cannot deny its utter truthfulness. Both classes are 
solecisms, abnormal growths on the social body, created 
and fostered by unhealthy social conditions and develop- 
ments. It is not so much nature that makes men dis- 
honest and oppressive in exercising the self-preserving 
faculties; it is greatly the opportunity supported by the 
fear of failure. Those who gain riches by other than 
honest means are dishonest from circumstances so far 
as results go. Natural propensities to thievery do no 
special harm until a chance occurs toexert the inclinations. 
In private life no one leaves valuables on the doorstep in 
communities where thieves abound. The home life must 
be the type of the national life. If our laws had ever 
been of a nature to render impossible the preyings of the 
strong upon the weak, or better yet, if all had been made 
equally strong so far as such helps go, the despoilment of 
the masses would not have been, as circumstances, habits 
and laws would have been against as they now favor this 
order of things. 

Where labor is bound to the pleasure of monopoly as 
with us, there must ever be misery. Capital in the hands 
of a distinctively capitalistic class cannot employ the 
workers that are crowded out of work by the introduction 
of machinery and contracting opportunities. The limita- 
tions to consumption resulting from these restrictions 
will tend with lapse of time to accentuate the difficulties 
so created. The increased power of production enables 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 293 

a comparative few to supply the limited demands of 
hampered consumers, and while invention progresses and 
monopolization of opportunities more and more close ave- 
nues of self -employment, fewer still, in comparison to the 
whole, will be able to produce a supply adequate to the 
relatively lessening demand. 

Given access to land, the man who starves because 
another will not or cannot give him labor and wages in 
payment for labor, will supply his own wants and those 
of others. He will not only do this but he will be able 
and anxious to exchange the wealth he creates for other 
wealth forms that his brother workers create. If one will 
do this, how much more effectually will the five million. 
In this way: Five million laborers are out of work. 
There is no hope for them in established industries for all 
places are full. Now, what actually would occur in this 
nation where five million workers are shut out from idle 
land would not vary in fact from what would take place 
if land should be opened to use or if what is practically 
the same thing, a new continent where land is free should 
be discovered. Providing food supplies is the primary 
industry. In the case of the new continent the movement 
among the five million would be toward farming. Arti- 
sans, professions, would follow, each occupation receiving 
the number that would make the most profitable terms for 
all. The result of opening land to users would in this 
country to-day as much establish a new industrial com- 
munity as it would on the new continent. The relief that 
this withdrawal of competitors would bring wage workers 
would operate to increase wages and as wages go up all 
forms of production increase in price ; this communicated 
action and stimulation would reach a healthy limit in both 
wages and prices and remain there so long as land re- 
mained open to users. For as new workers seek employ- 
ment where opportunities are closed they crowd down 



294 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

wages and with wages go prices in all unmonopolized 
fields. Where opportunities are open, the newcomer 
naturally seeks the work most suited for his hands and 
as production commands production all products would 
stand on a basis of equality in exchange according to 
time and skill necessary to their creation. So in the 
natural state of industry, some would take up farming, 
some manufacture in varying branches, some other work 
and the products in each department would demand and 
exchange for those of the other, and others. All that 
stands between us and this ideal industrial state is the 
dearth of land available to labor. Land that is not used 
we have in abundance that would give employment to 
more than the five millions many times multiplied. The 
scheme is simple; the result would be — Utopian? Per- 
haps ; it would be the commonest of common sense states. 

The effect of labor-saving machinery in displacing labor 
increases at a speed startling to contemplate while keep- 
ing in mind the fact that resources, in the present order, 
are practically closed to labor. To those whose earnings 
must supply their needs, the situation is appalling. The 
public domain is absorbed. The hundreds thousands thai 
annually found homes and occupations on the cultivable 
lands of the country are thrown upon the helplessness, 
the hopelessness of established industries. There is land, 
but they may not use it, under the laws. There are 
abundant resources but they are sealed to labor. Ma- 
chines increase in number and effectiveness, crowding like 
sentient creatures for the places, holding on, toiling cease- 
lessly like hungry men whose ears are haunted by the 
wails of little ones. 

We must effect a relief. We cannot go to a policy of 
five million idlers, and more fearfully, idlers from neces- 
sity and not choice. The thousands, at times as we have 
seen, the millions, who are tossed by the high tides of 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 295 

national crises from hopelessness of wage employment to 
despair of self-employment find a refuge and a foothold 
nowhere. The number will grow at more than our growth 
in population for concentration proceeds; the number will 
grow until the time comes when all may work who will. 

In a field of broadly diversified resources embracing 
as does our country the advantages of profitable appli- 
cation to all branches of industry, laws granting special 
powers to one form must secure that advantage at great 
sacrifice to others and very great injury to the people as 
a whole. The natural resources are the ones to be devel- 
oped to the greatest profit in order of importance and 
profit following the lines to which the greatest natural 
advantages adhere. A free field to all and favors to none, 
is the very best any law enacting body can do for the 
multiplicity of business enterprises to be followed in our 
land. Of the wealth sum in our country, or to be pro- 
duced in our country, of the opportunities for creating 
wealth, that which attracts by unnatural earnings draws 
from other enterprises, or from the products of other 
enterprises in the amount the favored industries command 
above their legitimate proceeds. Laws operating to foster 
certain industries act as a check to the diversity of indus- 
try that would spring up; this is done by attracting to 
favored fields the energy employed in forwarding produc- 
tion. The favored fields being engaged to their utmost 
of profitable returns, energy will be discouraged from 
other enterprises to a degree in which the favored indus- 
tries can do business at profits below what the unen- 
couraged branches offer. The effects of laws like these 
are of double force in societies making private monopolies 
of natural resources to further restrict the diversity of 
employments and developments essential to the welfare 
of all. 



296 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

In the wars that have been waged on trusts in pro- 
duction, trusts in transportation and trusts in distributing 
agencies, the trusts have been able to present one good 
argument in behalf of their existence, and one which 
under proper industrial conditions would be a sufficient 
one. This is the argument of cheapened total rates to 
consumers. It is mainly true even under present orders. 
Its deficiency lies in the feature of private trusts that ex- 
cludes occupation and profits to the masses. If coal 
should sell at a dollar per ton, the man who is out of work 
and therefore lacks money to buy must do without coal. 
The monopolizations and law specializations that make 
trusts possible deprive the people of their rights to engage 
in profitable occupations. Of what avail then are cheap- 
ened prices ? The very forces that apparently cheapen 
prices under trust control destroy the consumer's ability to 
command to the fullest of his desires. Lowered rates are 
only one-half the blessing claimed in full for trusts. The 
other half is the ability to buy. This ability being totally 
lacking in many lives it cancels the benefits of lowered 
rates and brands the trust not a blessing but a curse. This 
ability being reduced to all but trust operators it renders 
the trust system an injury to the industrial world. While 
the products of their departments are put on the market 
at rates lower than could be maintained without any form 
of combination, the trusts fatten threateningly. Indi- 
vidual effort and slow-going handicraft replaced by combi- 
nations and multiplied machinery have magically reduced 
prices and yet leave enormous profits to operators. Where 
competition is a matter of rivalry among individuals, 
trustsfor all their claims to price reductions are the death 
herald to universal prosperity. 

While trust prices are low because of the great savings 
in expenses of production possible to combinations, they 
are yet robber prices to consumers being so largely in 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 297 

excess of the prices that would prevail if a reasonable 
profit only were aimed at by operators. When trusts have 
taught the people the wisdom of combination for the 
profit of those who combine they may be said to have 
fulfilled their mission in our industrial evolution. The 
operation of industries by government in those branches 
subject to monopolization would only be an extension of 
the present duties of government. To-day government 
shares with banks the monopoly of money issuance. To- 
day government competes with express companies for the 
transportation of packages. To-day government com- 
petes with private monopolies in the transmission of mes- 
sages. To-day government employs men and women to 
carry on these works, to even inspect the conduct of cer- 
tain forms of private enterprise and the employes of gov- 
ernment are the best paid workers in like forms of service 
and government gets the most unprejudiced and least 
selfish service. To extend the influence of government 
in competing'enterprises is only a matter of public choice ; 
the assumption by government of control or competition 
in all industries subject to monopolization would be no 
innovation. This leads us not far from the claim that 
government is responsible to workers to the degree of pro- 
viding work for all who may demand. It leads squarely 
face to face with the question of proper government inter- 
ference in distinction to the complete abandonment of 
the people to the pleasure of monopolizers and trust opera- 
tors. Government monopolizes the letter-carrying busi- 
ness and does so at a profit to government, the whole 
people. Private enterprise monopolizes the oil product 
and does so at a profit to monopolizers and at great loss 
to all others. These being the respective results of govern- 
ment and private conduct of monopolies what is to inter- 
fere with the assumption by government of the control of 
'resources that have been seized by private monopoly, and 



298 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the competition by government in those secondary forces 
that have also been diverted to a form of monopoly which 
we call trusts? There is nothing to prevent such control 
and competition but the opposition to be met in the resist- 
ance of plutocracy and the prejudice of the people. The 
power of the first is fictitious and therefore entitled to 
little consideration. The patient sufferance of the people 
perpetuates the plutocratic dynasty. Hence their word 
would terminate this period. The consent of the people 
inaugurated a wealth power ; their negative would termi- 
nate it with great profit to themselves, and with no abso- 
lute wrong to the dethroned powers. In fact, the ad- 
vantages they would still command would be very great 
in many ways. Aside from the advantages it is no injus- 
tice to be subjected to the same limitations all come under, 
to be empowered with the common rights. Therefore but 
little consideration is due the opposition to be met here. 
The prejudice of the people constitutes the real bar be- 
tween themselves and industrial freedom. Not until they 
have thrown off allegiance to their enemies will they be 
able to serve their own cause. Not until they have wearied 
of shouting "We be Caesar's subjects" will they be fit to 
receive their true king. 

No man is to be despoiled of wealth, no matter how 
acquired, in the restoration of industrial rights to the 
people. Some would be deprived of the power whereby 
they extract wealth from its creators, but this is not de- 
spoilment. A single example kept in mind will forever 
clear away the befogments engendered by malicious mis- 
representations. Government assumes control of a rail- 
way system, we will say. The wealth forms necessary to 
the operation of that railway the past company will be 
recompensed for in the transfer of control. Constructed 
lines, buildings, rolling stock, all material constructions 
would be treated as a purchase to be effected by annual 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 299 

payments for a certain period or be satisfied by payment 
of an amount representing a fair valuation of stock. The 
lands held by the company would not be bought by the 
people. Its use was granted by the people to the com- 
pany. Its use would return to the people. In the public 
control of this railway rates would not be cut to a point 
where competing roads would be ruined ; they would not 
be put up to a figure where producers would be injured. 
The road would be conducted on principles that would 
give the best possible advantages to the public. Compet- 
ing roads would be forced to the same terms. Such profits 
as the government railway earned would benefit the peo- 
ple; all dividends declared by its managers w r ould go to 
the people as stockholders. These profits would be de- 
voted to public works, libraries, schools, art galleries or 
to whatever purpose seemed best. In this way assumption 
of control and competition by government clearly wrongs 
no one, clearly benefits the people. When the people 
weary of Caesar they will take away his scepter and put it 
into the hand of their natural king. 

In the two classes grown distinctive here by many signs, 
we are establishing our social state. It is not the state 
of which the fathers dreamed. In the life of a nation 
the time has been short in which we have developed a 
wealth aristocracy to rule the land ; those who exert power 
by the magic of gold are not considerate of those who 
abdicate in their favor so that the hardships of the masses 
grow is not to be regarded as unusual. That the breach 
should widen between plutocracy and democracy is not 
unnatural. That the differences marking Havealls and 
Havenothings grow is the fate of the latter. In the second 
class there are many divisions. At the head of the class 
stand the few who receive good wages for the skill and 
intelligence they bring into their work ; shading on down 
from this class those are reached whose pay is for that of 



300 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

mere brute force, drawers of water, hewers of wood, 
machines receiving machines' wages. Not that they lack 
skill and intelligence; there is not room at the top for all. 
Lower yet we have the social-industrial sediment, beyond 
ambition in this generation, humanity crushed down by 
the weight of a burden meant for all but shifted to a part, 
a burden light when properly distributed. For these 
wretched, their lives' hope must be — not to keep out of 
the almshouse — -they are past that glory; fortunate is he 
for whom there is yet room. Their day dream, their 
fevered, restless night dream is charity; the beam that 
lights the path of youth, the support of active manhood, 
the staff of age, charity. If we knew a broader and better 
charity than that of bread giving we would snatch down 
the man-erected barriers, level the law-created powers 
that shut out humanity from the fields of enterprise and 
self-support and implant within this nation the germs of a 
civilization and prosperity the equal of which the eyes of 
Heaven have never looked upon. 

It is disorder, it is destruction, it is death to us to longer 
continue the order that makes it impossible for honest 
workers to gain a living by honest work. It is the folly 
of fools multiplied by the madness of hell to shut out from 
natural fields of enterprise the workers who ask only the 
right of self-support, and expect peace, expect the de- 
frauded to be content if charity reaches out a white hand 
to them and gives them and their helpless ones a meager 
portion of the wealth gained from fields all have a right to 
harvest. To expect them to be content if the hand is not 
reached out is as reasonable. The bread eaten of charity 
is seasoned with a salt that generates and multiplies dis- 
cord ; the seed of favoritism sown in a nation ripens in 
the black fruit of death. Our course has been a madness 
and a folly grown insupportable. It were well when the 
hour strikes for the setting aside of mistakes if those who 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 301 

fancy they profit by them show less reluctance than now 
to yield unfair advantages. Let not right be too much 
withstood. 

We have all the resources that go to make us a mighty 
social and industrial organization. There is but one thing 
lacking to make us the greatest nation, in true greatness, 
yet borne on the bosom of the globe. That one thing is the 
proper and even development in the fairest manner to all 
of the powerful productive forces we embrace in our scope 
of territory, our climatic advantages, our intellectual capa- 
bilities. 

Industrial freedom is the chief corner-stone in the social 
structure. Fathers cannot educate children when they 
must keep them in bread-earning fields ; man cannot culti- 
vate the soul graces when his time is divided between 
severest labor and necessary sleep. 

When a man becomes master of land he becomes master 
of those who must live upon it, is so trite a saying that all 
have heard it. It is so self-evidently true that it needs 
repetition only to keep before us the sense of absolute 
mastery of the landholder over all that land implies. If 
the holder pleases to let it lie fallow, agriculture must 
cease. If he chooses to check industry it must cease in any 
line dependent upon his possessions. If he determines to 
keep it tenantless those who have called it home must go 
to some other place, those who would like to come 
may not. 

If he proposes to let its rich mineral resources remain 
undeveloped they must do without fuel for warmth and 
metals for their arts ; if he develops these he may ask 
what price he will, and in combination with other land- 
holders, there is nothing left the public but to pay his 
price. The wild animals that inhabit its forests or prairies 



302 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

are his, the water spring is his, the fruits are his. He may 
have trespassers arrested by due process of law if they 
but walk on his grounds and the time has been short since 
sample specimens of land monopolists served warning 
that certain undesired parties would be shot if found tres- 
passing on the grounds of these sample specimens. If it 
suited the landholder to do so he could hold a virgin field 
enclosed by invisible, inflexible and insurmountable pal- 
ings in the heart of a metropolis, where the eyes of land- 
starved children might longingly gaze on its greenness 
but where their feet dare not trespass ; where humanity 
lives tier upon tier, packed side by side like fowls in a 
crate, but none might live on the landholder's land. Where 
starvation follows hyena-like the steps of toilers whose 
meager wages cannot satisfy, but on the landholder's land 
none dare intrude to cultivate food. Where rent at rates 
too high for profit shuts up shop and yet the bankrupt 
may not use this field ; it belongs to the landholder. 
Municipalities are at great expense to care for the desti- 
tute, the homeless, the suffering and unfortunate, but no 
municipality feels strong enough to dictate to the land- 
holder ; the collective people are not brave enough to seize 
the field and use it. The nation with a nation's cares and 
the weight of social adjustments is puny before the pre- 
sumed might and right of the landholder. 

But the landholder holds land for profit and he does 
not let fields stand vacant in the heart of the city, — not 
very extensively. The more essential a possession is to 
the life and happiness of others the greater financial gains 
to its holder does it represent. The landholder will there- 
fore demand all the land-starved workers can pay for the 
use of his land, keeping rent rates in common with other 
landholders at a line that will enable workers to pay rent 
and live. The condition of the landless will therefore be 
no better after the palings are removed than it was before 






INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 303 

for the landholder will not take away the barriers until 
the population has increased the necessity for land to a 
degree that will insure the common rent rate. Land 
power being life power the landholder does that which he 
pleases with his own and the users of his land pay the 
rent. 

In behalf of monopolization and favoritism a complaint 
has gone up that should forever be the death sentence to 
the forces it seeks to serve. All have heard the com- 
plaint — that the forcing of labor into certain lines of 
action is, or would be a bad thing. And, to prevent this 
forcing, special laws for encouragement and strengthening 
of other industries are passed ! So we do not force labor. 
That labor be not forced laws are enacted to coax capital 
into certain fields, making these fields doubly profitable 
to capital. Labor is not forced into fields unprofitable 
to capital. Capital engages the business favoritism makes 
most inviting and labor follows capital. 

Forcing labor into unnatural fields is unprofitable 
always. This is what we have been doing by special laws 
encouraging special industries as a secondary compulsion 
on labor in further support of the primary compulsion of 
land monopolization. By the primary compulsion we 
force labor to seek employment from capital; by the 
secondary compulsion labor is driven into the employ of 
capital at wages destructive to the common prosperity. 
Labor cannot go to land without paying rent ; labor cannot 
be employed by capital except upon such terms as the 
latter determines and between these two stones labor is 
ground fine. We compel labor by these means into de- 
partments which are profitable to the controllers of labor. 
Labor is now under a compulsory government as to time 
and place of work which leaves no choice to the laborer. 
He must go into the work that promises a living ; he must 



304 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

go out when his master can take advantage of situations 
by forcing down pay to compel him to strike or by taking 
cheaper labor in the places of old hands. 

Society is laboring under a compulsory system, much 
being expected and exacted without return; the streams 
of industrial enterprise that should make habitable and 
fruitful the land are drained into the poison-breeding 
pools of tributary favoritism. It is because labor has been 
forced out of a natural into an unnatural course, because 
capital has been lured with the promise of immediate and 
magical gains that ills attend our industrial operations. 
Lest labor foolishly drift into starvation by a life of hus- 
bandry, the land has been given to those who may keep it 
from being an instrument of suicide. Lest labor reck- 
lessly be self-entrapped into a state of independence in 
occupation, the resources to self-occupation have been 
parceled out that labor may be given occupation by the 
holders of these resources. These are some of the precau- 
tions the self-appointed guardians have secured to pre- 
vent labor, as it is said, from being forced into unnatural 
lines. 

It is the plea of the wolf that would protect the lamb. 
It has been prolonged until its echoes come back in dreary, 
barren mockery. It has gone up from so-called, self- 
styled economists supported by and in the interests of the 
monopolistic brigade. It has been endorsed in wholesale 
from the attorney-general's belief that trusts are not 
amenable to federal law down to the attenuation of a soup 
bone and peck-of-meal-per-week pamphlets. But many 
who at first did not know that it had origin and con- 
tinuation in misapplication and falsity are asking why 
actual wealth producers are the ones that lack wealth in a 
country where wealth accumulations are marvels of 
reality. They further ask why since Donothings have all, 
Doalls have nothing. They also ask in this clearing away 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 805 

of inconsistencies why would-be workers starve because 
they are fed not and freeze because they are clothed not 
when the whole world stands in need of those very wealth 
articles they pray to be allowed to create, for which crea- 
tion they should be recompensed in all they need. They 
want to know, too, why strong and willing hands are 
holden by invisible bonds from administering relief to 
want while the means to such relief lies in unstinted 
abundance around us. 

There are too many inconsistencies, too many discrep- 
ancies to be vanquished by an explanation that does not 
acknowledge a fundamental wrong. Right principles do 
not result in such evil effects. If our basic relations were 
under the law of justice we would find no such injustice 
governing the relations of results. True, some would be 
born and live in wealth while others would be born and 
live in poverty, just as some would be born and 
live normal and some abnormal in mental and physical 
endowments. But physical and economic diseases would 
decrease under healthy conditions, with descent from the 
generation that caused the strains to appear, growing in 
decrease with the continuation of relief from the causes 
of each. The number of those who would live healthy 
lives would be increased from the beginning of the new 
order. Lust of wealth would not long continue a char- 
acteristic of our society for riches are not man's highest 
ambition ; they are not the ambition of any normally con- 
structed man. A desire for a competence and assured re- 
lief from the fever dream of poverty is all he asks. Of 
themselves, riches are not the most desirable possession 
and few really care for them. It is the possibility of 
pauperism that goads men into habits of grasping par- 
simony, reckless speculations and Shylock exactions from 
those whom they get at their mercy ; it is the inevitability 
that others will go up over their prostrate lives if they 
20 



306 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

do not go up over others that makes men selfish to the last 
degree. This possibility and this inevitability are both 
the results of refusing to recognize wealth creators as 
wealth controllers. 

Had the distribution of wealth in our country been 
governed by the equality that marked its production we 
would to-day be a nation devoted to the calm and confi- 
dent production of more wealth, the pursuit of useful 
knowledge and the arts, unharassed by the restless, 
anxious state we know, unblemished by the subserviency 
of so much of the best thought and energy of our people 
to mere money getting. The visible wealth of the nation 
would have been greatly increased, the efficiency of pro- 
ductive forces would be immeasurably advanced by such 
control over the fashioning and ownership of wealth. A 
fear of failure, straining all physical and mental powers 
to the one end of accumulation, even bread winning, is 
resultant in degenerative influences which have already 
begun to tell on our national character and are causing our 
name to become a synonym for greed and sharp practices. 

In a land of diverse resources, comprising the founda- 
tion for a complete industrial state, no one industry will 
be developed unduly if production is permitted to take a 
natural course. The law governing exchange will regu- 
late production with automatic increase or decrease as the 
demand is. Losses to the entire industrial society will 
occur when fostering laws are introduced to divert ap- 
plication from forms equally profitable by nature to en- 
gage in those which by a false system promise great im- 
mediate gains and future power. The detrimental effects 
of these laws are then seen in the inability of labor to pro- 
duce without the active cooperation of capital. For where 
the greatest advantages inhere by nature or by man-made 
law, there will capital flow until the industry arrives at 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 307 

a point of development that renders further devotion of 
capital unprofitable. By the support of man-made law 
monopolization in these industries will forever exclude 
mere labor from entering and developing, for by the 
power of monopoly labor may not appropriate natural 
forces ; by the power of capital labor is drawn to the field 
most profitable to capital. Where labor is excluded by 
monopoly the lead of capital is imperative, reversing the 
natural order that draws labor first and from labor capital. 
By the close monopolization of forces natural, capital, or 
the product of past labor, is made to lead the way and 
the creator is led captive of the creature, the maker is 
chained slave of the made. Freedom to labor and ex- 
change are indispensable to a true, strong growth, but the 
monopolization of opportunities makes labor the subject 
of profit by monopoly kings, and exchange grows fitful 
and unreliable through the impossibility of labor freedom. 
Whatever forms production takes if left to a free and 
natural course would be for the producers most bene- 
ficial. In no form will production in volume much ex- 
ceed demand even though law encouragements be 
showered upon special branches. The encouragements 
will augment profits at home and by so doing enable de- 
velopers to gain a certain advantage in foreign markets, 
but both at the expense of home consumers. All man- 
given advantages are at the expense of consumers ; there 
would be no advantage to one without a corresponding 
disadvantage to others. So protective tariffs are at the ex- 
pense of consumers of protected goods; trusts organized 
to protect the controllers of certain products create protec- 
tion by the destruction of competition ; monopolies protect 
monopolizers by giving them control over a necessity, 
for the use of which all others must pay them tribute. 
Efforts at regulations, once begun, cannot cease while the 
disturbing element remains. We have tried to regulate 



308 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

industrial operations, putting industries under the control 
of a class, that, we say, will develop them. Having done 
this and the promised development developing conditions 
unbearable, regulations must again enter in the form of 
wage, hour, and age regulations, and many forms simi- 
lar. These things will regulate themselves automatically 
if not tampered with by efforts that virtually place ad- 
vantages all on one side. Freedom, economic as well as 
religious, is the link that unites man to the higher life, 
the bar that separates the freeman from the slave. If it 
should be found necessary for all to become farmers, all 
manufacturers or all of any given craft, that state is the 
one we must drift into. The state to which the greatest 
natural advantages attach is the most profitable, the nec- 
essary. No harm could come of such a course. The 
necessary is not harmful; it is only what must be done. 
It is time we learn this and set about doing some of the 
necessary things, some of the things that must be done 
in the way of getting to a natural basis or worse than 
necessity will overtake us, — even fate. 

Through numberless mistakes we are brought to face 
a situation which fifty years ago to all but the prophetic 
would have looked to be possible only in the blackest 
forecasts of the chronic croaker. Idleness in all centers, 
industries stagnating, starvations, the most active and 
thoroughly organized efforts at charity notwithstanding, 
would have been scoffed at as a hideous nightmare con- 
jured by the troubled brain of unrelieved pessimism. Yet 
in the year of our Lord less than two thousand, in the 
goodliest, most fruitful land of the globe, the pessimistic 
picture has been realized. Horribly evil because of its 
lack of justification is this situation. While his fellow- 
freemen starve for the fruits of the field, the only market 
affording a compensation for the time and labor of the 
American farmer is secured by crop failure in other 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 309 

bread-producing countries of the world. Prosperity in 
no field is to be bought by the sufferings of the race. Our 
policy of protection in the injury it has wrought fleeced 
consumers, our policy of monopolizations in the disastrous 
effects on wages and the producing world make it plain 
that injury will result in injury. 

The American people are not and no other people are 
in danger of having too much to eat. They would not 
if all were farmers. The danger does not lie that way 
any more than it lies in the way of too much clothing, 
too many books, too many pictures, too many of the nec- 
essary and beautiful features of this life. There is need 
of all that man creates, and all being accomplished the 
law of exchange, freed from restrictions and governments, 
will happily perform its work of distributing the varied 
products of labor as far as demands require and all classes 
will be happier and better. 

The law of exchange, from abstruseness, should occa- 
sion no stumbling. One man makes rudest plates of clay 
and fires them in his clumsy oven ; his brother laboriously 
whittles out knives and forks. The first man exchanges 
plates for knives and forks, the brother exchanges knives 
and forks for plates and each sets his unpretentious table. 
The elegant fop who has brains enough to pay for his 
dinner with good coin or a cash demand on his bank 
works by the same law. He knows, although he may not 
stop to think it out, that manufactured goods made by 
other hands can be readily exchanged for farm and other 
food products gained by other hands, once you possess 
the goods to exchange. In himself he combines both 
faculties of production and need exercise neither. He 
has an easier and more direct way of demanding each. 
He owns the ground on which the manufactory stands 
or on which the food was raised and by his power to com- 
mand land he commands its products as need or fancy 



310 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

dictates. If he owned the men who create these he would 
have like power but in a less profitable form, for he would 
be compelled to feed and clothe and house them though 
their workmanship be of a minor quality. Now those 
workers of minor quality cannot pay the rent and good 
workers live on the land, so he commands his rent with- 
out the cumbrous complexities of man owning. 

Own the men? Guardian Angel of Emancipation 
attend us! Know ye not that slavery was abolished by 
word of proclamation and constitutional amendment 
nearly forty years ago? There stands the record and 
none may gainsay it; the Emancipator even declared 
that he who would be no slave must own no slave. Only 
heathen nations recognize the right of some to hold their 
fellows in physical bondage. The esthetic sensitiveness 
of civilized nations suffers a severe shock at the mere 
suggestion. Slavery, — think not of it nor speak the hated 
word in our hearing. Why smoke of cannon, death agony 
of wound and thirst and the bitter grief of loneliness ; why 
living agonies of suffering, of crushed lives because of the 
absent, beloved one who comes not nor speaks a word of 
cheer to relieve the hopelessness of long years? Why 
heart burnings of hate, why exalted deeds of holy patriot- 
ism, a nation struggling as in the throes of mortal pain, 
brother with arm uplifted against brother ? Because men 
must be true to their hearts and consciences, even in the 
hell broil of war whose peaceful issue was the elimination 
of that accursed institution. It was ever so ; it will ever be 
so when truth calls to the heart of man. The words 
were inspired and must remain, a keynote in the harmony 
of universal justice; — this is indeed a world of compensa- 
tion and he must not expect freedom who consents to own 
a slave. 

Forms differ but results do not. It is all-important to 
some; form may be the only distinguishment in a national 



INDUSTRY DIVERSIFIED 311 

system. The man who having a grudge against his 
brother provokes him to a struggle and slays him may 
be acquitted on the plea of self-defense. He has ridded 
himself of a hated enemy, but he does it according to ac- 
cepted methods. He did no murder, the law says, 
although he took life; he only defended himself. It was 
a competition in which life was the victor's prize. Had 
the world known what was in his heart the advantage he 
gained would have been of short survival. But in the 
competition which admitted of room for one man and no 
more the other man was made to give up his life. Forms 
differ, but there was only one man escaped with his life. 

Forms differ but results only can picture the true worth 
or injustice of a system. There are general and spe- 
cific laws we must obey, there are conditions all will admit 
to be wrong or right, but the degree to which they affect 
the people must stand their surest judge. 

The requirements of our national life will be met in a 
diversity of employment guided by the interests of 
workers. The opportunities are such that none need be 
cramped if our wisdom may be found equal to the situa- 
tion. Two schemes for the control of industries have been 
proposed, one strictly individual, one individual in compe- 
tition with the general. The former has cramped industry 
and pauperized producers ; the latter holds out a promise 
of justice to all. The aim of individualism is the survival 
of one ; of socialism, the preservation of all. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE PATH WE FOLLOW. 

As our population increases the inability of our present 
industrial scheme to provide for all becomes correspond- 
ingly greater. Capital, as an employing agent, becomes 
unable to offer work to more than the small part of those 
who cannot work for themselves. Capital as a factor 
in the industrial processes merges its purely capital func- 
tion in that of monopoly. Such capitalists as cannot do 
this are crushed. It is monopoly-capital that employs 
labor in the wage-paying fields. And because of monopoly 
comes the clashes between the industrial classes. 

A generation ago, such were the opportunities open to 
labor that none but the peculiarly unfortunate, those who 
could not move to newer fields, were helpless before their 
necessities in material goods. The unappropriated land 
of the west offered golden returns to him who would go 
forth and conquer. But that land is locked to him now. 
It is there, not half in use, but the black magic of private 
claim keeps him from putting it to the relief of himself 
or fellow sufferers. A generation ago, such were the 
resources open, broken fortunes could be mended, labor 
could enjoy a degree of independence now impossible and 
there was plenty for all who would work. If work could 
not be obtained in shop or factory the seeker was not 
limited to these places of action. Land was to be had, 
small ventures were not despised or choked in infancy by 
the merciless competition, the fierce process of absorption 
which has since swallowed the small investor and amassed 
in the colossal establishment under the management of a 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 313 

group of persons the control of an entire branch of indus- 
try in a nation. Those were in the days of the man and 
the tools; these are the days of the tools and the man. 
Now destitution reaches out lean hands and the tramp 
infests every community. It is not because human nature 
has undergone a change and men love to beg for a living 
or prefer starvation to activity resulting in plenty. Such 
explanations have been offered but the man who submits 
them must be one-half fool and the other half knave or 
wholly the one or the other. No nation, no age has seen 
a generation in the numbers that we see so suffering that 
would obstinately abandon work for idleness when sup- 
port depended on exertion. No social state has witnessed 
it where the opportunity for bread winning was open to all. 

It may be you have heard the advance of the Kings 
Brigade and hastened to draw the curtain aside as they 
marched by in the early candle light of dawn. They 
numbered a dozen or less. Swinging their dinner pails, 
they marched. Their worn hats set back from brows as 
true and earnest as ever wore a kingly diadem, faces con- 
fident yet grave for they must conquer. The frosty earth 
trembled with sparkling rhythm for she recognized her 
masters and rejoiced in their coming, and the brawn of 
their good arms swelled to the measurement of their tasks. 
My indifferent brothers, these men of the knotty hands 
and bespattered overalls picture more eloquently a nation's 
greatness or perfidy than the silver tones of oratory could 
proclaim or keen pen of historian delineate. By them are 
nations known and judged, by them and their condition 
we discern the march or halt of civilization in the family 
of man. 

You have seen him, the solitary king, sitting down to 
his lone meal under the branches of a friendly tree. Many 
passed by in their hurry of cares but few saw or heeded 



314 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

the royal scepter he had for an hour cast aside, for it bore 
the fashion of a spade and the stain of clay was upon it. 
But if you loved him you moved nearer, not in curious 
impertinence, for that is not born of love. When you saw 
his repast generous in the substantial you passed on glad ; 
if something beside these you smiled inwardly and 
thought of the tidy wife and the little home, how she arose 
early in the morning to prepare his breakfast and the 
solicitous thought she gave to the arrangement of his 
dinner. You thought of the comforts of his home-coming 
when the day's work was closed and the happiness you 
gained lasted you the rest of the day and colored your 
thoughts long after. If his dinner was scant and hard 
you saw more plainly the stoop in the shoulders speaking 
despair, the worn clothes seamed and patched, and you 
passed on with a sorrowing bitterness in your heart and 
you wondered how long the world would have iniquity 
to rule rather than righteousness. And the picture of 
the dethroned king will come to you without an effort of 
memory when you are seated at table where gay company 
and brightness bid you forget as the world seems largely 
to have forgotten that hunger and despair are in the 
world. i i 

You have passed the knot of despondent idlers whose 
distress over cold hearths they could not forget. The 
downward, weary look, the pitiable dejection spoke in the 
language of the heart. Then you felt the impotence of one 
soul to level the mountain of error that blots out the sun 
of righteousness in men's lives. You have seen little chil- 
dren in the streets whose wan bodies half-covered, 
heralded to the world the story of their lives and all the 
strength of your soul rose in fierce wrath at the wrongs 
to those whom the holy Nazarene set before the world as 
examples. In attic and cellar, in places of vile resort you 
have known of lives sunk into deeps from which there 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 315 

seemed no redemption. And when the populace turned 
out to honor a hero as one to whom honor was due, when 
flags waved and men shouted, throwing up hats and when 
women smiled and fluttered handkerchiefs ; when words 
of living eloquence called tears to the eyes; when you 
listened to tales of heroism that would make the meanest 
man valiant; when you read the story of glorious deeds 
and your heart swelled with grief at wrongs and then 
leaped to follow how they were blotted out in blood and 
you applauded the killing of monster wickedness embodied 
in human shape, you thought of these. And while you 
thought, truth and conscience brought the swift conviction 
that there is more in the brave bearing of their lot to huzza 
at, more to pity in their continuation in this state, more 
to condemn in their oppression than in all the rest. 

The present age has less of excuse for wrongs of man 
to man than any time past. There has been advancement 
made in the ethics of government and human responsibili- 
ties to human kind in social zones, in intellectual force and 
advantages for material advance that makes wrongs such 
as exist to-day more unpardonable, more damnable than 
ever before in this world's time. 

The miseries are not those of nature's infliction. The 
power that sustains the worlds has not inadequately pro- 
vided for the intelligent creature to whom was given 
dominion over all creation. The material is at hand 
for the satisfaction of all lawful desires. Our grim, silent, 
old earth-mother loves her children; would be the most 
provident and tender-caring mother but that their willful- 
ness flings back at her the gentleness with which she 
would nourish them, rejects her bounties held in easy 
reach. From the moment they open their eyes in the light 
of this world until they close them in the last sleep of 
cast-off mortality, she fails not in her part. Npt until 
man has triumphed over her to the wronging of his 



316 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

brothers, not until wrong is able to contend with right and 
falsehood with truth, when the pristine law of justice has 
been supplanted by deceit and usurpations and strength- 
seized powers, and the laws of man have defied the laws 
of nature, does a dearth of earth's fruits cause want and 
woe in the family of man. Had we been wise enough to 
discern this law, had all nations of all times chosen to 
walk in the blessed radiance of its light rather than 
stumble in bigotry and error through jungles of darkness 
because they loved evil, these calamities that have now 
overtaken us would not even threaten. 

i 

Much has been and much remains to be said, truthfully 
said, of the opportunities lying before the child of 
America. The possibilities for some of them are great, 
such as the great heart and soul in all ages and genera- 
tions of the world have seized upon or created, with per- 
haps more to overcome; such as have blessed the world 
because of brave and great lives and influences. The 
openings here for these exalted livings are to be found 
principally in our high valuation of virtue rather than in 
any more tangible inducement to successes. America has 
blessed humanity and taught the race many rudiments 
of man to man truth and will continue to do so. It could 
not have been otherwise by the very facts and circum- 
stances of our nation's launching and continuation. The 
spirit of liberty had been fitfully manifested in old-world 
civilizations, but only as the ignis fatuus, to recede from 
the arms outstretched to grasp it. America was dis- 
covered, populated by civilization and governmented that 
liberty and right, tired of struggling with the besetments 
and obstructions of the old world and old-world ideas 
might have a champion and figure worthy the approval 
of heaven and true men. 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 317 

Much has been accomplished in the heaven-imposed 
task. Much is before us that must be accomplished. Much 
accomplished in the beginning has been annulled in effect 
and must be restored, for greed and the lust of wealth 
would trample down all the sacred rights of humanity 
and set up their unholy altars in the temple of liberty 
while the powers they usurp protect and abet the desecra- 
tion. To such spirits there is no sacred thing, neither the 
God-made nor God-maker. Their strongest motive in 
pursuit of their ends is good-destructive, their ambition 
gain, their god gold. That affairs in a large measure have 
been handed over to them and our sacred ideals set at 
nought for their schemes is no fault of theirs. They could 
not but reach out for the power and lack of vigilance 
secured to them the prize which no force of arms could 
command. Money is the sole sublimity of human ex- 
istence to hearts of this class ; they know no law but that 
of money getting and like all who have but a single am- 
bition they bend everything to the accomplishment of their 
hope. They have attained an influence in government that 
is unsafe. We have given them a bill of sale on the pres- 
ent and a mortgage on the coming generation. 

Equality of opportunity has been devoured of this force. 
The treachery is the more complete being accomplished 
by means of the very agency designed for the public 
safety. Through the din of conventions and the bluster 
of campaigns is to be heard the chink of gold at the tables 
of the money changers; in legislative deliberations it can 
still be heard, ominous of evil or revenge as the forces of 
plutocracy are pressed back, soothing, with lying silkiness 
of false assurance as they advance and parley for better 
grounds. In dealing with the sacred and solemn respon- 
sibilities of humanity to man the same diabolic music 
goes on. Gold, gold is the power they use and obey, the 
power we too, while under their dominion, must obey. 



318 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

The pity is that they have been allowed to pollute the 
temple by their unhallowed trades. The shame is that 
having polluted it so long they are not forthwith whipt 
from it. 

What we have been able to accomplish in the way of 
fastening bondage on a nominally free people must pass 
unchallenged among its kind. What class control of 
wealth resources we have taken in all about a century to 
effect, England has done in certain domains by the small 
effort of occupation, a trifling expenditure of ammunition 
and the laying down of some English lives and many lives 
not English. But the method of the conquerors and ad- 
ministrators of America was the only one possible to 
them. On the whole it has been cheaper for the powers 
of anti-democracy than the policy pursued abroad. When 
American resources have been so appropriated that 
American investors feel the need of a wider range, and 
when they have become powerful enough to compel ac- 
quiescence with their demands, we will be called to a like 
line of action. The advance guard of monopoly look 
even now to foreign fields of enterprise. Our national 
policy is being stretched to cover insular domains in the 
Pacific where trusts and monopolizations seek to instruct 
a less advanced people in their kindergarten of a civiliza- 
tion such as they are becoming the stern tutors of in 
America. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine is being 
diluted to reach out across the waste of Atlantic waters 
for possessions there, that the protection of American 
laws may be the safety of would-be plunderers of semi- 
savages. 

After any of the great tribal migrations of Asiatic or 
European peoples in the earlier ages, comparative repose 
dwelt with the numbers finding a change, a spreading out, 
necessary to their preservation. This quiet prevailed so 
long as the comparative equality of condition first insti- 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 319 

tuted prevailed. As the resources of the acquired coun- 
try became more centralized, as wealth concentrated and 
oppressions grew, unrest and uprisings became the order. 
Such is the enfeebling effect of infamously gained wealth 
on a strictly wealth power, such is the disorganizing result 
of oppression on the masses that no race can withstand 
the disintegrating leaven of a supreme plutocracy. These 
states yielded readily to the tumultuous waves of barba- 
rian masses impelled by the thought of spoliation and 
nerved with the vigor of freer, less oppressive conditions. 
The assailed had no hope of successful resistance against 
the demands and encroachments of their virile assailants. 
The wealthy classes were too small to make a force and too 
effeminate had legions of their kind sallied forth to with- 
stand the invaders. The oppressed classes had no more 
interest in the triumph of the native plunderers than they 
had in that of the oncoming horde. A change of masters 
signified not any thing to them ; their estate could be made 
no worse. If the conquerors starved and beat them, dese- 
crated their homes, so had their first masters who had 
promised them defense. If the newcomers killed them 
off like plague-stricken animals that there might be room 
for the followers of the invading chiefs it but shortened 
their misery, and the school in which they were reared 
had taught them to value their own lives as little as they 
valued the lives of others. Their outlook was a miserable 
life to be ended by death as ignominious as the life they 
lived. Such a people are at the mercy of their enemies 
but there are none so much their enemies as they who 
have sunk them to that depth in which they exist. 

In our country society started forth on terms of equality 
for all, in claim, and such as our claim still. America with 
virgin opportunities and marvelous wealth possibilities 
presented to all classes the hope of a complete equaliza- 
tion, where the limitations of overpopulated and power 



320 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

grasped resources of the old world could find no entrance 
to prevent the working out of a social state hitherto un- 
known and scarcely dreamed of in the rosiest pictures of 
man's mind, and which should stand as an ensign and a 
pattern of success to all coming worlds. But the pos- 
sibilities for such a result were not secured and when 
vigilance slept monopolization entered and at once the 
drift changed. The American laborer in a few years 
passed into the social and economic state of his fellows in 
the old world, and in places the class fell to the level of the 
most unhappy of this kind. The absolute degradation 
will be complete in a few years if usurpations continue. 
The condition of the most wretched reaches out an extend- 
ing influence, drawing within its ever-widening limits 
circle after circle. Wages sink with a steady persistence, 
not even retarded in ultimate movement by an occasional 
upward move in some limited quarter. Opportunities 
draw constantly closer to a complete monopolization, 
whose signs are riots, low wages and social unrest. 

As our beginning provided a choice for transcendent 
right to the avoiding of the mistakes of past efforts, our 
latter experiences have shown us miserably unequal to the 
superior alternative presented. We have proven lamenta- 
bly inadequate to the opportunity provided, without par- 
allel, for a civilization and a government on planes of 
justice impossible for years to come in the nations bound 
down by the iron law of custom and mis-education in the 
rights of man conjointly with the rights of kings, be those 
kings hereditary rulers in political spheres or class 
favorites in any realm whose existence as such works 
detriment to the masses. A nation founded upon 
and grounded in a brutalizing oppression of the masses 
requires hundreds of years in struggle and educational 
effort to lift up the great body of people to a plane of 
self-assertion where they will demand and none dare re- 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 321 

fuse their requests. To begin at that plane and go down 
has been easy and a matter requiring but short time with 
us, presenting the most unhappy retrogression the ages 
have been called to witness. Of itself, republicanism is 
futile. The rights of citizens in any state will be buried 
under the foundations of oppression unless the people 
institute and maintain conditions granting freedom of 
opportunity, essential to the continuation of the rights of 
all. This was the glory set before us but were disobe- 
dient unto the heavenly vision. 

Openings for small and new ventures have ceased to 
exist; competition in its legitimate functions is dead. 
There is no place for beginners but in the employ of estab- 
lished businesses. Opportunities to become wealthy by 
any but gambling means, to engage in profitable industries 
are becoming heirlooms; if the gambling opportunity 
possesses permanency, it has also been covered by a per- 
petual patent. Occasionally a struggling recruit succeeds 
in working up to the front ranks by some route his genius 
discovers, or through the fall of those ahead of him. But 
always through some unforeseen happening. The chances 
for success in a fair and free field are against him as the 
field has ceased to be fair and free. His hope of reward, 
of sustenance, is daily becoming more a question of his 
ability to get on the payroll of a hirer of labor or to edge 
his way into the ranks of those whose rewards are indi- 
rectly drawn from the same source. The youth of to-day 
who has ability, energy and eagerness, stands practically 
no chance of succeeding in establishing an independent 
industry for his own and brother's good because the 
resources to such industries are held by private owners 
and governed to crush out beginnings. That he could do 
so has been one of the national fictions which glossed the 
wrongs our industrial policy practiced. Industrial ability 
21 



322 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

now and to come, until we change this order, must be 
tributary to established concerns, and ultimately their 
prey. 

Only on the unfortunate have we caused nature's and 
reason's provision to hold good, that whoever does not 
work may not eat, the infant, the feeble, the fool excepted. 
Too often do we abrogate that law, the wisest and most 
indispensable safeguard of the morals and happiness of 
the race. Idleness, indirection, are unsafe and unwise 
whether followed in elegance or vagabondage. The 
reward for all indolence should be the same, for nothing, 
nothing. But we have said to some, Ye work not, there- 
fore suffer, ye and yours ; starve in the face of plenty ye 
may not possess though striving bitterly and with your 
best effort; thresh not, O oxen! thresh not, neither for 
yourselves nor for your masters. To others we have said, 
Ye work not yet eat of the best that nature improved by 
man can provide ; wear the finest robes and delight your- 
selves in the luxuries that only the genius and advance- 
ment of this present day make possible. 

To the one class that toils not nor spins we have shown 
contempt, coldness, disgrace, notwithstanding the fact that 
we have made it impossible for them to do so. To the other 
like class we have shown honor, so-called, subserviency, 
and showered them with fatal opportunities. The de- 
pravity of one and the profligacy of the other is a theme 
for moralists, religionists and reformers who lay the bur- 
den of it all upon the supposed tendency of the human 
heart to sin. Let not man judge between the Dives of 
special opportunities and privileges and the Lazarus of 
human neglect and defraudment. No finite judgment may 
be passed as to the extent of influence that environment of 
thought and companionship has upon the morals of man- 
kind. But one thing is certain: if the princely condi- 






THE PATH WE FOLLOW 323 

tioned voluptuary and the slum dissolute were put to work 
at some useful occupation the Devil's force would be two 
men short the greater number of hours out of every 
twenty-four. Idleness luxuriating in a mansion or lodged 
in a doggery produces the same results — the perversion 
of morals, human activities and desires. 

If any sleekly comfortable and well-fed, self -constituted 
judge of humanity and the human heart preaches the 
unreliable doctrine of morality for morality's sake his 
ideas and expositions of what should be are correct 
enough, unquestionably. If he contends that it is more of 
natural depravity than unnatural environment that con- 
duces to the low moral tone of mendicants and wretch- 
edly conditioned workers, let him exchange spheres with 
one of those whose weaknesses he holds in such pity and 
scorn and see if it be not easier to live a virtuous and 
exemplary life, with Pharisees for judges, in his than in 
their circumstances. To be good the world must be com- 
fortable. The child reared in semi-starvation naturally 
steals food ; with him it is not wrong to do so ; with many 
it has ceased to be a sin because human life is coming to 
be regarded of more value than the petty affair called 
property rights. To be happy, we must be just to our- 
selves including all, for happiness is not the fruit of 
injustice. Goodness and happiness are both the heritage 
of man and both are in the world, did the world but know 
how to attain the state in which they will consent to visit 
and bless the lives of men. But the remarkable ability 
of human life to adapt itself to environment, scientists 
say, is the one condition of survival. That is to say, if 
parents accustomed to the airy space, the woods, the grass, 
and smiling brooks reflecting azure skies, should move 
into a neighborhood of smoking factories, dirty, foul 
smelling streets where the greatest stench in heaven's 
nostrils is, after all, the cause that makes the situation, 



324 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

their tender babe would lanquish to a death of inanition 
induced by lack of moral life force, being further en- 
feebled by lack of physical nourishment common to such 
lives. The hardier and less sensitive composition of the 
parents would withstand the strain, absorbing as a matter 
of self-preserving inoculation the poisons generated by 
that atmosphere. The complex nature of human exist- 
ence as found in the two would transmit to subsequent 
offspring an increased power of resistance to the elements 
fatal to the child transferred from pure to foul surround- 
ings, so that in the third or fourth generation this power 
would be increased to yet stronger development, — to a 
point where the embruting conditions enter into the very 
core and fiber of child life. 

New York City as a type of the ultimate social state 
toward which we move, shows some things worthy of 
note. The sea-girt city is the clearest example of what 
appropriation and monopolization can do. The land of 
the island cannot be added to, but it can be easily sub- 
tracted from in available space through the arts of land- 
holders. So likewise can all land. In this city it is said 
four per cent, of the entire population live under separate 
roofs, the remaining ninety-six per cent, live under roofs 
with other families. There is sufficient kernel in this for 
the moralists, religionists and reformers of humanity to 
last them many days. When children to the number of 
nearly two hundred are herded under a single shelter the 
baby farm will flourish; while the soil remains so fertile 
and the crop so prolific compared to space, babes will not 
command more than a dollar each in the markets where 
such trade is growing common. The desertion of infants, 
urged by the pressure of poverty, child murder to secure 
insurance on defenseless bodies are also some of the fruits 
of poverty and the accommodating capabilities of human 
life to a settlement to the level of environment. What 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 325 

greater condemnation could be passed upon the causes 
leading to home conditions of which it is said that one way 
to abolish the saloon in quarters where the rate is ten 
saloons to one church is to bring the rest of the neighbor- 
hood up to the level of the saloon. Home surroundings 
less inviting than the saloon assert the hopelessness of 
attempting to force reformation through the abolition of 
those resorts that are more in keeping with human ideas of 
neatness and comfort. This asserts too the advisability of 
elevating, by some means, the home above the saloon 
level. 

There is one surpassing evil in our midst ; in the whole 
physical universe of God there is no shame like that which 
causes hunger in the body of a child. This shame 
increases with our numbers and wealth. That men should 
lose the strength of manhood in the lower depths and 
through generations of insufficient food grow stunted in 
size and diseased in body is a horrible thing. The cry 
of a single little one for bread penetrates the ears of the 
Lord of Sabaoth beyond the prayers of a whole nation that 
sin and suffering may cease while their causes flaunt, and 
the cry of that little one blots out the prayers, flinging 
them back to earth barren, a curse upon the supplicants. 
That there is a lower depth beyond the solid basis of a 
comfortable living this same God will hold us responsible 
for, do not doubt. That the poor have been ever with 
them has caused the gold and silver of nations to canker, 
their riches to be food for moths. The nation that sinneth, 
it shall die ; has died, always. 

A bishop has done some calculating. He finds, that in 
a given field, it takes one hundred nine missionaries and 
something more than one hundred sixty thousand dollars 
to convert one little heathen girl to a system of theology 
that sees annually many little ones starve, many more enter 



326 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

upon wrecked careers, doomed from the beginning 
because of unjust economic conditions. Poor little girl! 
Ah, one hundred nine missionaries! Alas, one hundred 
sixty thousand and odd dollars from the wealth of a 
nation that cannot save the physical lives of its many poor, 
that does not let them be even self-saving. Do ye indeed 
reckon that the force devoted to the work can save in our 
way the soul of one little heathen girl ? Let us trust that 
the issue will be even such, or at least, no less fruitful. 
It were a pity if no good came of it all, if the little heathen 
girl had rejected the kindness and obstinately clung to the 
theology of her fathers which brought her food and cloth- 
ing in the degree of her desires. If the little heathen girl 
should refuse to stay converted it would be a grevious 
thing. The effort engaged so much that the hungry little 
ones of this land will rejoice at so great a salvation. They 
only lack bread, and clothes and human love. They have 
a sufficiency, and it might be said by one critical, a super- 
fluity of theology. 

How much the deprivation of physical force has 
sturited the intellect and blunted the soul qualities of the 
oppressed, so retarding humanity's progress, can never be 
conjectured. We know that to reach the highest and best 
development, comfortable material surroundings are im- 
perative. Occasionally a bright-shining genius flames out 
of the great sea of poverty but it is only to express the 
truth that mental gifts are not heirlooms, that the masses 
may have a figure. All are not bright-shining geniuses 
but all are immortal souls with immortal rights. These 
rights declare for all the best possible lives. That thefts, 
homicides, despoilers of virtue, that all moral filthiness 
finds shelter in comfortless abodes of penury and beggary 
does not astonish the one who weighs physical surround- 
ings and their influence in the scale against mortal's moral 
transgressions. The business of the world is the blotting 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 327 

out of causes, not offenses, for offenses will not be 
removed while their causes stand. 

Absolute deterioration in the lowest economic class is 
marked in our country. The number so influenced is 
growing. Half a century ago could not be found in our 
population the suffering that is now experienced in a sin- 
gle metropolitan city. The vices common to pauperism 
have kept an even growth. The God-image is not devel- 
oped by the conditions that make life a struggle for bread. 
The beast-image is followed in the order that makes strife 
for physical necessities the paramount aspiration. The 
deadening of sentiments and affections natural to the 
human heart is not the least evil growing out of a state of 
chronic poverty. With no time, no means for the cherish- 
ing of these feelings there is a growth in hardness which 
accounts for the depraved state of physicality, mentality 
and morality in societies where effort to gain a mere sub- 
sistence is pressed to the limit. Conditions of life unnat- 
ural, crimes horrible, moral states far below many forms 
of brute life and mental endowments but little above, are 
some of the penalties societies pay for injustice to a class. 

The competitive industrial system as we have experi- 
enced by the constricted development of powers and the 
violence done mental progress retards by so much the 
advance of the race. The stuntings, hereditaries and 
enfeeblements caused by the operation of economic 
inequalities weigh on social development by hindrances to 
individual cultivation with a pressure none can estimate. 
Those communities where child labor is restricted and 
where labor of women, especially married and young 
women, is governed by strictest regulations, show the best 
industrial conditions. This, to leave out all questions of 
morals, is a thing worth striving for. In our own country 
the rule has been found to hold good. It is also found 
that wages will be higher in the fields employing most 



328 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

efficient labor. Investigators claim that English superior- 
ity in industrial competition is due to regulations of this 
nature. The effect on the higher life of the people by 
the extreme development of one-sided competitive indus- 
try is a part of the equality privilege we in this land dare 
not ignore. 

There are said to be one and one-half million women 
in the work places of this land. That will have its bearing 
on the lives of the coming generation. The number of 
women in cities who resort to prostitution as a means of 
bread-getting is horrifying. In one population it is rated 
as high as one to twenty-three. Even the apologist for 
love of mother, honor of sister, respect of wife and pity for 
daughter dare not attribute this awful state to causes other 
than the one assigned. In metropolitan quarters girls are 
paid by big firms such wages that they must sell their 
bodies to shame and their souls to the Devil that the added 
money they thereby receive may with the stipends they are 
paid for long hours of hard work help support themselves 
and those who look to them for shelter and bread. 

The average family has been computed at five in num- 
ber. The wage worker can be counted as one to furnish 
his average. He has been blamed for this and various 
propositions have been advanced for limiting the number 
of human beings finding shelter in homes of the people in 
this class. It is hard to tell if the theorists who have 
sought solutions of this apparently difficult feature of 
class economics are unintentional fools or deliberate phil- 
anthropists, but certain it is their theorizing has not 
resulted in the benefit to the race they hoped for. One 
item in the population record worth considering is the fact 
that economic conditions as they exist to-day discourage 
marriages in the middle and better class while the lower 
orders marry and multiply at a rate that sets Malthusian- 
ism in an ecstasy of excitement. Those who believe it is 






THE PATH WE FOLLOW 329 

the right of every child to be well born, well cared for, 
well educated, refuse to take up the responsibility of 
parenthood if they are so circumstanced as to be unable to 
discharge all the duties that state imposes. The theorists 
have yet to gain the recruit who will advocate a reliable 
remedy for the condition that appeals to them with so 
much force. The stinging-worded Swift proposed a way 
effective enough. But the period between his era and 
that in which noblemen were authorized to kill a limited 
number of serfs, only, when feeling the need of a blood 
bath had been a long one and custom is strong; so his 
remedy lacked what other remedies have lacked — applica- 
tion, for the palates of those to whom he offered his 
patriotic suggestion had been trained to a preference for 
other flesh than that of babes from the breasts of starved 
mothers. 

The population theorist has not suggested the possible 
remedial effect of decent living circumstances to check 
the increase. He has noted with horror that the miser- 
ably destitute number the greatest increase per marriage 
but he has not theorized on the possibility that a lessening 
of destitution would lessen the increase. He has not 
argued that better circumstances would make possible a 
better grade of citizens at the same numbers. He has seen 
that poor marriages average large increases and Mal- 
thusianism plods muttering in querulous discontent while 
misery propagates its kind ignorant of the charitable 
designs of the checks preventive and positive. Society 
sandbags the worker for funds to support the indigent and 
prosecute the criminal after both have been stripped of 
all means of self-support. 

That men should wear out strong lives in an aimless 
donothingism more wrecking than the hardest manual 
toil ; that they should ever behold with eyes gaunt from 
hunger the feasts of plenty placed just beyond their reach 



330 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

is not the fault of nature. That delicate women should 
know the pain of hunger and the sting of wintry blasts or 
be forced into work unwomanly, unfit, and yet suffer want, 
is not because their natural protectors are indifferent to 
their distresses but because these strong energies are made 
impotent by the decrees of man. That the children, oh ! 
the little children! — that they should learn as life's first 
lessons the soul deforming ones of bitter want and neglect, 
destined to lives of embruting ignorance and destitution, 
the soul of humanity and Christianity protests against. 
More pitiful far is such a prospect to the clear-seeing be- 
holder than could be any little hunger-shrunk, death-stark 
body it is possible for the eye to rest on. The one a liv- 
ing, tortured, the other a dead, unsuffering, embodiment 
and evidence of wrong somewhere. The first more sor- 
rowful, more cruel, more dangerous than the last. Not, 
in either case because it is a curse for them to be born 
into a world where plenty was bid run riot, nor because 
their natural guardians and providers are callous to their 
necessities or willingly negligent of the deepest, most 
solemn human obligations. The obligation, the command 
to grown-up humanity is in behalf of these, that they 
should be reared among the best influences, that they 
should be educated in the best possible way, that the high 
and rough places should be made easy of ascent in their 
progress to nobler manhood and womanhood as the world 
moves on to higher ideals and facts of human possibili- 
ties. This, the future good of the race, the success of 
humanity demands. Yet these, the hope of our future 
and our legacy to the world and time we are condemning 
to failure. 

By instituting an industrial system that provides em- 
ployment for all who desire is to make certain a great 
diminution of crime. That idleness begets crime all know. 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 331 

But this is not all of that part of the case. Idleness must 
be fed, clothed and housed, in a manner, the same as in- 
dustry is. If not honestly, then dishonestly; if not in a 
palace, then in a pig-sty. If not by self-exertion, then by 
the state. Sloth will consume as much as industry 
for bodily sustenance and additional supplies. If 
idleness and indigence rely upon self-resources what 
ought to be self-supplied by honest application and 
economy or left ungained is gained by fraud in 
some form. What ought to be gained by indus- 
try and economy or left ungained is often secured 
by fraud in some form among the class spoken of as en- 
terprising and substantial citizens, but sufficient for the 
present purpose is it to speak only of those who steal from 
necessity and not from choice, of those who keep life 
going by fraud and not those who make it opulent in that 
way. Most men are better pleased to earn a living by 
honest labor than by sly shifts and thievery; those who 
would not can be roughly classed as tramps and beggars 
by choice and legislation encouraged, tax-pampered 
monopolists. If there was waiting a reserve of unde- 
veloped wealth for the child to draw a living from by 
creation and wealth exchange there would be none to say 
there are too many babies born into the world. If the 
field upon which he was to sow and reap crops was not 
anothers to claim all but the entire increase, each would 
make the world more comfortable by fact of his birth and 
strength. The field being subject to private rent he must 
pay the rent even though he and his children suffer and 
Malthusianism heap up evidence of God's insufficiency 
and indisposition to care for his children. If the rent be 
too high and he be shut out altogether he or some of his 
encounter the check positive and the doctrine of insuffi- 
ciency is justified of her predictions and observations. 



332 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

Of those who are rendered subjects of charity by condi- 
tions variously named to mislead, as overproduction, 
hard times, scarcity of money and what not, it will be 
found that a lack of land is at the foundation of their 
helplessness. Of those who can and will not work, those 
who work for substance then spend it in riotous living 
and come to want, since nature has not, man should make 
no provision unless it be in compulsory workhouses where 
at least the cost of maintenance would be repaid by the 
labor "of inmates. But even these, few as their numbers 
actually are, could not come to be public charges if open 
opportunities existed. Self-chosen idleness is in itself a 
crime and should be punished as such. But idleness of all 
kinds would cease as workers were secured in their earn- 
ings and desperation at systematic robbery would be 
succeeded by a calm sense of safety in a just industrial 
order. Idleness is said to be the cause of many of the 
most awful acts and inventions against society. But idle- 
ness is itself a result, and never a cause. It may be an 
opportunity, but the cause of idleness is the cause of all 
that marks the further drift from natural human condi- 
tions. The social adjustment that would call out all the 
natural activities of man would by rendering a dearth 
of causes correct the evils preying upon society and by 
forestalling the opportunity prevent the act. We recog- 
nize work as a corrective measure after crimes have been 
committed. Men are put at hard labor as a punitive 
measure and to distract their attention from their sur- 
roundings and the past in which physical inactivities gave 
time to the plotting and execution of plans of crimes. 
Had law compelled work before it would be a wiser penal 
system. Had law made it possible for this class to work 
at a fair reward, the crime would have escaped com- 
mittal ; for the few in any population who would choose 
idleness even then, a regulation that punished persistent 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 333 

indolence with a prescribed amount of work would, in 
most cases, save offenders from crimes greater than 
idleness. 

We compute wage averages and say the wage scale is 
high or low as the average appears. It only approaches 
justice as this average approaches the full earnings of the 
worker. Paying a man three hundred dollars a year 
when his earnings are six hundred is presenting some 
one who has no right to it with half of what is rightfully 
the worker's. So the system that beggars workers and 
creates a wealth aristocracy is a system of robbery in one 
or many forms. It may be the form of robbery that 
operates through monopoly in natural fields, it may be 
that form known as protective tariffs, it may be other 
forms of capitalistic monopolizations as in the control of 
railways to the ruining of competition among producers 
and the building of trusts to control production. 

Not a living of mere food and shelter is the guarantee 
that discharges the obligation of society to the individual. 
There are other necessities in the line of education and 
higher culture our age provides and makes imperative. 
All these are his right. How far we are from a guarantee 
of rights may be dimly seen in the number who labor for 
the barest, scantiest necessities, and the effort of manly 
brawn being insufficient, the worn, scantily nourished 
mother and tender children must add their quota of puny 
energies to help carry burdens beyond their strength. 
Yet how many others die of actual starvation, how many 
sink into premature graves because they cannot command 
such protection from the enemies of human life as must 
be had to fill out allotted years. How many fail to live 
lives of such fullness as is good for the world, cramped 
lives because unfoldment is denied ; how many live lives 
of evil because there is nothing in their surroundings to 
call forth good, but all to encourage evil and repress good ; 



334 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

how many children have a promise of poorer lives than 
their parents. How shall we answer for them, how de- 
fend ourselves in the day of reckoning, which if you do 
not believe comes to individuals, your knowledge of his- 
tory and what it teaches tells you comes to nations ? The 
structure grows as the builders build, and what we weave 
into the national life must show, finally, in that life. 

Men will be good while there is that in the multitude 
of surroundings making up life that teaches and shadows 
forth goodness. All would be moral darkness, the black- 
ness of hopelessness otherwise. Men could and would 
work if they were given a chance to do so and charity 
funds could be devoted to better uses. But men cannot 
work without land. The possibilities for good citizen- 
ship through employment for all which a right land policy 
would bring about would be worth more to the people 
than all the grief many times told would cost that would 
come of the setting together of dry bones to inaugurate 
this beautiful order. There would be grief and expostu- 
lation and threats and false prophesying and dire lamenta- 
tions preparatory to obedience to such a command for 
the bones are exceeding dry and have come to love their 
valley much. But there would be life! 

American laborers have not as a class reached that point 
in the tendency to labor absolute dependency where mere 
brute wages of hay and stall are enough to satisfy and 
occasion grateful thanks. May that day never come. 
The spirit of the workers strives against it. Hence the 
labor uprisings of late years, one for a year, the industrial 
world over, it is becoming possible to say when foreign 
complications do not enter as an impulse to continue pro- 
duction, so keeping the wheels of industry astir, dimming 
the common perception to the schemes of enemies at home 
in the watch that sits for enemies abroad. When these 



THE PATH WE FOLLOW 335 

impulses give way and the order of entirely domestic 
interests again sets in the path is found narrower than 
before. Season of national peril and revival of uplifting 
patriotism is the time for the seizure by the wealth powers 
of opportunities which are not presented at any other 
period. 

Labor is not stupid of intellect, the accommodating 
principle has not long enough been subjected to the brute 
environment; intelligent labor, as much as the pinch of 
hunger is felt feels the injustice that permits one man in 
a few years to become a multi-millionaire while it causes 
great numbers to be crushed. Intelligent labor knows 
that if a man can single handed wrest from nature a 
living a man armed with proper tools and by the mutual 
increase that comes from exchange can command all the 
comforts united labor and trade make within the com- 
mand of any class. To know that between these comforts 
and the actual condition of labor some one else has pros- 
pered without deserving is as plain a proposition as that 
if all be taken from five but two, three will be the number 
taken. 

What man can do in the isolated state he can improve 
in the social state. Exchange blesses man and man. 
Machines bless man, were designed to bless man. But 
machines must not be made masters, must not be per- 
mitted to take the bread from children. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS. 

Some victories have already been achieved. Experi- 
ment has proven that taxation of land values insures 
nations against the disorders common to states in which 
private control of resources prevails. In the late financial 
panic circling the globe and sweeping nations irrespec- 
tive of governments, it has been noted as a star's ray in 
the night gloom that those societies by provisions that 
rest taxation on the broad basis of land values, alone 
escaped the general lot. Where opportunities have been 
reserved to all, the shattering of enterprise, the ruin and 
desolation that devastated the rest of the business world 
found a power greater than the power of panic. Orders 
founded upon economic and industrial justice came 
through that trying season triumphant. Prosperity abated 
not but kept even progress at the rate set in other years. 
This is what the land tax advocates have claimed for the 
theory, theory no longer, but demonstrated fact. This 
is a success no other system has been able to present to the 
world. This is the outcome of an idea pronounced vision- 
ary, impossible, destructive. The visionary becomes the 
real, the impossible, plainest fact, the destructive, salva- 
tion. That general prosperity accompanies justice in first 
relations is no more a dreamer's theme upon which to con- 
struct Utopias ; it is a visibility all may behold. The 
bright hope this success presents in contrast to the state 
found here and in other economic societies governed as 
we are, suggests the question, Shall right longer wait 
on the hesitations of timidity, the selfishness of greed ? 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 337 

The people are crowding into towns for the sufficient 
reason that the country affords them no place. Less than 
two-thirds our people in the year of grace nineteen hun- 
dred live in country homes. With our vast empire of 
tillable land, a comparatively small part of which is culti- 
vated and that small part to a limited degree, we find men, 
women and whole families rushing into towns there to 
seek a precarious arid hard-earned living in poorly ac- 
commodating workshops, living in cramped, disease breed- 
ing quarters. Shut in the livelong year from the influ- 
ences of nature and knowing largely no amusements but 
those of the questionable resort, no helpful recreations, 
they miserably exist. For companionship there is the 
herding together of dispositions possessing in combination 
all the elements to disorder and immorality which make 
cities the centers of vice, of disregard for law and the 
rights of others, of contempt for human sanctity. The 
consideration is more than that of mere bread getting. 
To those who have studied populations in such congrega- 
tions the consideration is one that cannot be passed over 
as incident to growing national numbers. 

While men must labor for bread, these people must have 
work. Many are not so fortunate as to secure employ- 
ment of a permanent nature but live by the proceeds of 
chance work, always looking for something lasting. These 
failing, dishonorable practices are entered, for men will 
live. 

In the good old days a few short years ago when 
monopolizers were oracles and privileged powers grew 
and waxed mighty as the givers of gifts to labor, these 
centerings of the people were attributed to moral defects 
in the heart of man. But the attraction of city life as a 
cause for these ingatherings is not to be accepted as a con- 
siderable one. To these people the glare and glitter of 
tinseled society can be only fitfully seen through the plate 
22 



338 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

glass of more than princely palaces as the perfumed air 
within sways aside the silken draperies. They have no 
part, no lot in these attractive places. Their contributions 
to the success of such gorgeous pageantries are in a calm 
and unquestioning acquiescence in conditions that make 
possible the distinction between their lives and the lives 
of those within. Their own homes beyond those who live 
in modest comfort possess not attractions that would call 
in friends for an evening's festivities nor fascinations 
strong enough to draw sane people from a life, where if 
human companionship is not so readily to be had, the free- 
dom of habit and sanitary advantages more than compen- 
sate for the loss. The vices abounding in cities claim few 
of these recruits at first and many are never corrupted, 
although their surroundings breathe impunity; many go 
to early graves through slow starvation rather than seek 
means to renew the body forces by proceeds of corrup- 
tions. The inherently vicious being the only class drawn 
to cities as better fields for the exercise of evil propensities 
are in numbers much too few to account in smallest frac- 
tion for this widespread hegira. 

If men and women were able to make better livings 
outside towns our urban populations would be increased 
but little above the fair portion gained by natural growth. 
If they were able to make better livings on farms, if they 
were left free to make livings at all, few would make the 
change that has been made a cause of complaint. There 
seems to be no room, no occupation anywhere for many 
of our people. No room in cities, no work where factories 
are idle. No room, no work in the country while rich 
harvest fields bear nothing but grass unused by man and 
beast. No room in almshouses for they are already 
crowded and officials and private charities have more de- 
mands than they can satisfy. No room at the kitchen 
doors of the prosperous for they are likewise crowded 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 339 

and all who seek bread in that way are tramps who de- 
serve nothing but severity, whose improvidence can be 
overcome only by a concerted refusal to encourage. No 
room indeed for many but in the narrow cells reserved 
for all death-stark candidates for the potter's field. There 
is room there and none to reproach even if the seekers 
for admission should seem to encroach on the rights of 
the established tenants. 

If some of the impositions that make husbandry a 
doubtful success or an impossibility were removed; if 
land was reserved to actual users, that they bearing the 
burdens the work imposes were accorded the right of 
profits and homes, the coming years would show a drift- 
ing away from the cities and back to the farms, a dissipa- 
tion of idle crowds into societies of prosperous self-em- 
ployers. This would ensue to greater completeness if 
restrictions were removed from all kinds of enterprise. 
We can feed and clothe the world but while the profits of 
industry are divided between the men who do the work 
and the men who control the opportunities with the latter 
receiving all but enough for the sustaining of life by the 
former, industrial enterprise will advance, halt, or recede 
with the hopes and fears of men. With profits divided so, 
production will cease when the profits to capital cease, will 
be resumed when the state of trade promises profits to 
capital. 

The truth about our rather unexpected state is to be 
found in that we have sought to stuff our industries, to 
direct the course of development rather than await the 
natural unfoldment and prosecution that the natural 
state of trade in response to demand would call 
forth. Steady and natural growth will bring permanent 
and good results. All our industries require is an un- 
trammeled start and to afterward be let alone. In this 
age of freedom and trade if the natural conditions are not 



340 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

such as to make a business a predestined success it is a 
cheaper and wiser policy to leave the development of that 
industry to await the time when changed conditions will 
advance the causes of success, buying in the markets 
where that product is most advantageously offered in the 
meantime. National prejudice and bargain-counter 
patriotism based on desire to plunder in home markets 
have done us inestimable injury through appeals to nar- 
rower bigotry and defiance of workers over the water, 
defiance bought at the price of robbery to all Americans 
but those "protected." Civilized countries and communi- 
ties no more need special protection to special industries, 
no more need law-made conditions to development than 
their individual members require coats-of-mail for pro- 
tection against the sword thrusts of their neighbors. Both 
practices are relics of barbarism, and strange to say, the 
most uncalled for and the most barbarous in widespread 
effect has survived to this present day ; not alone survived, 
but presents itself unblushingly to a progressive people 
and with grave assurance of utility and worth seeks en- 
dorsement and promotion. There is one legitimate pro- 
tection to an industry ; it is the demand for the products of 
that industry. All in addition to this is robbery of con- 
sumers and unmasked hostility to other industries. 

Less than five per cent, of our population own more 
than one-half the entire wealth of the country. This one 
fact is a whole volume on the dangers of monopolization. 
That puts into a plainer light the causes of disturbances in 
the labor world. When the few own the nation's wealth 
they control the liberty and lives of the people comprising 
the nation. Owning both wealth and opportunities to 
increasing wealth, that human ownership is complete 
when the time has been accomplished that is needed for 
the absorption of all resources. In the decade of 1880 to 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 341 

1890 the one state of New York gained more in wealth 
than the gain made by fifteen agricultural states sweeping 
the Atlantic seaboard south from Mason and Dixon's line 
to the Gulf and up the Mississippi valley to the Lakes and 
across to the Rockies. Massachusetts gained more than 
nine states similarly situated. There is no natural reason 
why these discrepancies should appear, to show so great. 
Our laws have been 'sectional and special that make an 
increase of such unequal proportions in the wealth of 
different states. In a normal state of industry exchange 
equals exchange and disproportions like these do not occur 
in the natural developments of trade. It is shown, too, 
that the sections increasing most in wealth present the 
greatest increase and proportion of paupers. The gain is 
to individuals and the extremes of poverty and wealth 
meet. These two states are not rich in the natural wealth 
forms, they do not in this respect surpass any of the states 
they have outstripped ; they do tiot in any way naturally 
possess advantages that would give their residents, un- 
assisted, such an enormous wealth increase over people 
many times their number living in areas many times the 
size of these states. The increase was due to the favors 
of law-granted privileges. The gain once inaugurated 
by fostering tariffs spread to other forms of industry. 
A few eastern states control the financial life of our coun- 
try. The early advantages given by law were closely fol- 
lowed by graspings of wealth sources in the way of trans- 
portation lines and lands until to-day the money loaned 
from this section drains, in demands for interest, the 
agricultural plains of all surplus wealth above a narrow 
return to debtors. The one-sided paternalism of our laws 
taxed the consuming mass of the people for the benefit of 
the manufacturing class and the financial advantages so 
gained were put to a doubling of the burden. Now, 
through the operation of financial laws the money loaned 



342 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

out by these states has been doubled in obligation, so that, 
unless a wiser policy is soon adopted these centers of 
wealth and power will in years to come show a much 
greater proportionate increase. 

In this same period, the most troublesome of that length 
so far recorded, labor strikes in number reached to nearly 
ten thousand, involving about three million workers. For 
a period double in length just preceding this time one-half 
as many strikes occurred. The growth of the strike and 
its futility as a mediator in the differences of laborers 
and hirers may be inferred from the record. Beginning 
with the crash of 1873 an d growing continually worse we 
have reached a condition where occasional rallies of local 
and temporary effect are the reverse of our common state. 
The historian and the statistician of the future will have 
the occasional visitation of prosperity to record instead 
of the strike, the panic, the suspension of business, if pres- 
ent tendencies go forward. 

The last coal strike of widespread effect cost the miners 
ten and one-half million dollars and the operators one mil- 
lion, it is said. It has been estimated that it will take ten 
years for the miners to recover the loss if no other compli- 
cations arise and there are no wage reductions forced 
upon them. As a result of that strike the miners received 
in advanced wages, approximately, two-thirds the increase 
demanded. These things could not happen under a de- 
velopment of mines by public ownership. This result 
also helps to weigh the strike at its true worth as a means 
of preserving wages. The circle has narrowed too much 
for strikes to retain the efficiency of former Jays. 

The full effect of monopolization on the wage rate is 
shown by the record in the coal field as fully as in any 
other. Within the last three years a record of seven and 
one-half dollars per month per man has been made for a 
period covering almost a year. This is an extreme ex- 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 343 

ample of high-wage American labor, it is true, but it 
goes to show to what the wage earner will be reduced 
when monopolization has accomplished its end. At this 
rate, each member in a family of five would average for 
home expenses, clothing, education, and amusement, a 
dollar and a half per month. High priced, best paid labor 
in the world, we say. Plutocratic oracles in their zeal 
to uphold this high wage standard made the charge that 
these miners in the memorable summer of 1897 struck not 
so much for principle and increased pay as for political 
effect. Base creatures! You should have continued to 
grow rich, to luxuriate in the elegancies of life at 
seven and one-half dollars per month, priding yourself 
in the fact of your highest paid, best educated labor in 
the world, devoting your energies to the support of the 
assertion and leave political effects to the Devil who has 
had, apparently, an all but complete charge of these effects 
in late years. 

A noted statistician has said one and one-half hours 
of work daily by the working force of the world will do 
the work of the world. How about that, you captains 
of industry who fight with stubborn desperation all propo- 
sitions for the reduction of hours constituting a legal 
work-day? He does not say, does not mean to say that 
production is to decrease, that wealth is to increase at a 
lessened rate from the present growth. Not that; only 
that the work of the world, sufficient for the needs of the 
world can be accomplished in ninety minutes in work each 
day if all the workers are set at it. Utopia is nowhere be- 
side such a state if such a state waits not too much upon its 
enemies. A man's day's work done other occupations 
for the time left would suggest themselves. Time for 
recreation, time to know friends, time for education, time 
for reflection and communion, time for worship, time for 
everything good and acceptable. Oh, yes ; it is impossible 



344 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

in the judgment of the objector. So are all propositions 
looking toward the comfort and betterment of mankind, 
the equalization of conditions governing the relations of 
man to man. Situations embracing common sense and 
common justice are impossible to the objector against 
these things; but when did a thing continue impossible 
after the people had laid their hands to it and said, The 
time for change is upon us. We look upon work as a cor- 
rective of false energies engendered by unhealthy social 
environs, but long hours of work leaving no time and 
strength for the cultivation of pure social tendencies or 
intellectual and all refining aspirations have cursed the 
world always. It is the ignorant mind and uncultured 
soul that give way to immorality and brutishness in act; 
almost without exception is this true. It is the intellectual 
state, the lofty ideals of justice and patriotism, the love 
of all forms of truth that unite to compose the godliness 
which exalteth a nation. 

But where shall the seven and one-half dollars per 
month worker appear, at ninety minutes per day? If for 
a normal day's work under the present system he receives 
these wages what would he receive then? Wages must 
come to a system of profit-sharing, a rational sharing of 
some sort governed by the real value of the contributors 
to production. In five years the average wage rate has 
gone down from where the worker received twenty cents 
on every dollar of value created to where he receives 
seventeen cents. The worker produces the wealth and the 
man who controls distribution keeps more than four-fifths 
of the products. These are capital's earnings we are told. 
But who made capital, and how, of itself, can capital 
increase ? 

This same seven and one-half dollars per month and 
this decrease of three cents on every dollar produced rep- 
resents much to American labor. It represents industrial 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 345 

tyranny; it represents the degradation of labor, of the 
great mass of the people ; it represents servility and the 
embrutishment of those who have no hope of escape ; 
it represents ignorance and the decline of the physical 
powers of all that portion of the race coming under its 
monstrously unjust provisions. The results do not appear 
with a moiety of the horribleness they will assume in 
the third generation at the same wage rate. Such wages, 
representing such results are too dear a rate for this 
nation which exists to show forth better things. 

Three direct .and widespread evils out of which grow 
the confusing multiplicity of consequent wrongs, result 
from the present-day land system., These evils are con- 
centration of population, high rents, the limitations to 
occupations. These three attend one upon each of the 
other, but in the direct results of any of them can be found 
cause sufficient for the condemnation of the order to which 
they owe their united origin. The brood of evils they 
produce, the results of their workings may be known by 
the condition of the common people, yearly growing 
worse. Added to monopolizations and results the effects 
of class legislation and results and we have the total of the 
common wrong. Under this complexity of difficulties 
labor gropes, under these multiplied weights labor groans. 
The wealth that should go, within proper limits plainly 
apparent, to the laborer solely, is held by capital and 
monopoly as a means to the further control of producers, 
and men work for bread with a persistence and anxiety 
which render life for them little less than a horror, an 
imprisonment totally devoid of the joys of a properly ad- 
justed life. With some it is already this; with others a 
like condition is becoming more unavoidable. 

Our wealth and prosperity are in a manner fictitious, 
being of a class and not true of all or even a major part 



346 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

of the people. As a nation among ourselves we are doing 
business on a large margin of watered stock — future de- 
mands, manipulated markets and the like. Failures, 
crashes, panics, are the legitimate results of this method. 
We strain business honor to keep pace with the mad race 
characterizing our time and way. With us not only is not 
getting money hell as has been said of a certain people, 
but to keep out of the hands of the money lender, to 
escape the receiver, is salvation and paradise; this 
condition, too, is a feature of monopoly-handicapped, com- 
petitive individualism. By our national policy those least 
able to afford it are tax-ridden to the verge of the pit, 
and many there be who fall therein. The great bulk of 
wealth they create does not benefit the creators, they are 
in fact oppressed by it, but they must still labor for their 
masters, for out of the dollar they get seventeen cents 
and with that seventeen cents they buy bread. The crea- 
tion of wealth is the result of competitive individualism; 
its discriminating distribution follows monopoly govern- 
ment of resources. 

If the lot of the class receiving a competence is growing 
harder there is a state worse awaiting them if they do not 
keep up in the unequal warfare, — the lot of those beneath 
who, as willing and capable, are forced out. This, the 
dismal scientists say, is the natural order of things, that 
children should grow up to possess less in worldly advan- 
tages and less of the blessings of life than their fathers en- 
joyed ; that men should struggle upward in counteracting 
strength to those who stand above and push them down- 
ward — that for all their efforts they should lose a little, go 
down a little each decade. Those who talk thus have con- 
sidered but the past with its wrongs. The future with its 
possibilities they have shut their eyes against. Those who 
uphold this as the divine plan consider but two features of 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 347 

life here, — their own three-score, ten years and the main 
chance. These two and no more. 

An equalization of conditions growing out from an 
equalized state of opportunity would be the result of a 
land system that gave land to the users and not the holders 
and speculators. Control of the land would give wealth 
to its fashioners, not to some power that has no part in its 
creation as at present is the distribution between labor 
and monopoly-capital, seventeen cents to the former, 
eighty-three cents to the latter. Wealth will always be 
controlled by those who control the sources from which 
wealth is drawn. If these sources are held by government 
for the benefit of all, their development will result in 
economic equality in the measure of production by those 
who work. To oppose land nationalization on the ground 
that its operation would work injustice to holders of pres- 
ent wealth forms is the protest of ignorance. No man 
would thereby be robbed of aught he had created. Fences 
would be his, houses would be his, all wealth creations 
separable from land would be his. The use of the land 
would still be his, for as long a period as he cared to use 
it. But the force of the argument for general ownership 
comes in the fact that there is much land now controlled 
from which labor is barred which would be resigned to the 
public under a system of taxing which assesses men on 
privileges of production. To scoff at public land owner- 
ship as impracticable and visionary is to take up the as- 
sumptions of the philosophers who proved that the world 
is flat by the claim that they had proved it could not be 
round. The belief that labor must be guided and con- 
trolled, protected by capital, finds its twin assumption 
flourishing in the days of the flat-world philosophers, 
namely, that man needs an ordained guardian to whom 
to pay taxes, to whom to owe servile obedience ; this is the 



348 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

belief that lingers in remnant in our own fair land that 
mankind is incapable of self-government, that the power 
of the people in government is inadequate, their wisdom 
insufficient, to express and maintain wisdom in any form 
they may feel called to institute. 

Redistribution and attempts at law-maintained equality 
in wealth possession savors of the present system, and 
no plan worthy of consideration has been constructed on 
its (specifications. But the odium it entails has been at- 
tached to feasible and wise ideas through misrepresenta- 
tions of those who prosper by present inequalities. 
Workers have not dreamed of anything so absurdly futile 
and unreasonable. The honest man who is better suited 
to work than to live by charity would scorn such ridicu- 
lous liberality of well meaning but unfortunately reason- 
ing vagarists. The wisely discriminating man asks the 
conditions that favor neither prince nor pauper, that 
make possible neither state financially designated; he 
demands the one that affords equal opportunities to all. 
Anything aside from this comes of evil and results as we 
have seen, can see daily. No one knows better than the 
single-tax advocate that the conditions he has been 
charged with trying to inaugurate would be the greatest 
possible wrong to all classes, and such wrongs, robberies, 
he has engaged to fight by all means honorable. The vir- 
tue of the remedy he presents to the laboring and social 
world for the evils abroad there is in equalization at the 
beginning of work and not after it is accomplished. 

To talk of restricting within prescribed limits the indi- 
vidual possession, to attempt an apportionment of the 
natural wealth forces is to confound confusion. Indi- 
vidual wealth, in an economic dispensation that is just to 
producers, is a matter of personal choice governed by 
ability ; it is not within the province of government to 
dictate here. In the matter of natural monopoly, under 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 349 

no land system will a man hold more land than it is 
profitable for him to hold. If rents were appropriated 
by government, those who now gather riches from land- 
holding would soon find themselves doing an unprofitable 
business with the results that they would be glad to leave 
off landholding and seek other enterprises. Two desirable 
results. To make present landholders collecting agents 
for the handling of rent has been wisely suggested. To 
make rents payable to the government's representative the 
land shark's grip would be completely chopped off as 
receipt for rent would be, to all purposes, a guaranty deed 
in favor of the renter. 

It is said an equitable apportionment of the land of the 
globe would give each inhabitant, at the present popula- 
tion, twenty-three and one-half acres. Land enough for 
all, surely. Give the frontier farmer this amount and the 
city lot holder and speculator the same and a more unjust 
scheme could not be devised. It is because the land specu- 
lator and rent extorter even now has the one-half acre in 
the center of populations that press toward his posses- 
sion, and the farmer even though he has the twenty-three 
acres or more, that so much of what is wrong presents 
itself. It is more because the twenty-three acre farmer 
pays taxes on his house, his barn, his orchard, his grain 
field, the most valuable part of his possessions, compara- 
tively, and because the one-half acre man pays taxes on 
his improvements which are comparatively the least valua- 
ble of his holdings that causes to appear the great differ- 
ence in the worldly prosperity of the struggling farmer 
and the land millionaire. Tax each of these men upon the 
values of their land, which values they prevent other men 
from using and drawing wealth from, and as the city lot 
is more desirable as a wealth factor than is the little farm 
remote from town and railway, so will the holder pay 
more taxes than the farmer. Neither would be disturbed 



350 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

in their possessions, real or created. Each would pay 
to society a sum for the use of land, based upon what the 
land would bring respective holders. This would equalize 
the opportunity of each to gain wealth. The values that 
society creates would be devoted to the benefit of society. 
Stripping these values from each landholder the wealth 
he creates from the natural source of labor applied to land 
would be his beyond the claim of man or society. 

At present, the burdens are all on one side, the ad- 
vantages are all on the opposite side. If the land mil- 
lionaire has the wish to reap larger rents from his realty, 
by his word he can throw labor out of employment or 
home until the increase is met, he can close mines until 
need drives upward the price of the minerals he withholds 
from consumers. He can afford to have his possessions 
stand unproductive for a season for he knows the necessi- 
ties of society will compel payment of advanced rates. If 
he is a patient man he awaits the natural increase of values 
following the increased demands upon the limitations of 
natural resources. Society knows his power, knows the 
law of rent, but is powerless to establish justice under the 
present management. Under this management industries 
and the welfare of all land users who do not, as we say, 
own the land they occupy, and all users of minerals who 
do not control deposits are at the mercy of monopoly. 
How tender this mercy is, rent rates, wage rates and tax 
rates can testify eloquently; more eloquent still is the 
testimony of starvation and soup houses. Eloquent too 
is the testimony of idle hands, strong and eager to do, 
that are nerveless, unavailing in forced helplessness. Elo- 
quent the misery of dwarfed and hopeless lives that Mam- 
mon has captived and chained to drag at her triumphal 
car. Eloquent the voice of the field that is reaped whose 
reapers are kept from their reward, — all more eloquent 
to heavenly hearing than to our earth dimmed ears, but 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 351 

which will sound with earth shaking thunder in that day 
when the mills of the gods begin to yield their long-pre- 
pared grist. 

As before said, the land system evil is not the sole evil 
and injustice of the present day; it does not, unaided, 
cause destitution on one side and unmeasured wealth on 
the other side of the line dividing society. But it is 
greater than any other, greater than all others for it affects 
all people. In the many ways by which private land con- 
trol, its monopolization in effect, works injury to the 
wealth producers, give rise to those false ideas of indus- 
trial control by which we are cursed. Greatest of these 
is the claim that capital is necessary as an employer of 
labor, that capital in order to employ labor must be made 
concessions, given privileges, so there will be ability to 
employ workers and give them wages. This is a plain 
inversion of the natural state, undeniably. Capital can- 
not precede labor, but by giving it power over and privi- 
leges denied labor we preserve the inversion. Disorders, 
starvations, charities ; a condition of labor amounting to 
slavery in its worst features is the outcome of this order. 
The record of industrial events, reports of humane 
societies and official figures, the tax for relief in its differ- 
ent forms, bear ample proof of a wrong somewhere but 
cannot be taken as a fair measure of that wrong. Too 
many are crushed of whom the world can never know, 
too many are limited whose undeveloped powers cannot 
be reckoned in loss to themselves and society. That these 
should be attributed to minor causes when the prime one 
stands for all others is to say that death ensues from heart 
failure when that organ has been pierced by a rifle ball. 
A comparison of wages with profits, of workers' condition 
with the condition of monopoly holders can force but one 



352 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

conclusion and that belief is comprehended in the state- 
ment that land power is life power. 

The remedy is not formidable; it is not hard to apply. 
It is not monstrous, impossible, unless seen through the 
squint-lens spectacles of those to whose interests it is to 
perpetuate the existing order, or through the fear-dimmed 
sight of those who stand in awe of the influence and dis- 
pleasure of this class. The remedy is natural and easy 
of application. The condition we call protection to labor 
in its double-dealing and misleading representations we 
have long suffered from. There is no class better able 
to guard their own interests if economic forces are prop- 
erly adjusted than the strong-armed, clear-brained 
workers of America. It is a foolish mockery to prate of 
protection to such a class. The emptiness of the claim 
is doubly apparent in the plea being made by those who 
seek to exercise the protectorate. The guidance of 
enemies under any order would lead still further from 
happiness, lead more directly to turmoil. The claim that 
capital must develop resources for the benefit of all when 
capital is presumed to mean capital in private control, the 
profits to go to private control, is a part of the same fal- 
lacy that sets up the cry for protection to workers. 

The laborer of America is a man of the same rights and 
endowments as his employer. He is not a child in intel- 
lect; he has not been incapacitated by generations of 
abuses that necessity for care and guidance may be urged 
in behalf of his wage rate and the manner of spending 
the same, as can be put forward with a show of justifica- 
tion in the case of workers in old world states. How far 
that justification should be the shame of those who seek 
it is not so much the consideration with us. It is our 
work to insure so far as we may for all time the absence 
of any justification for abuses of workers here. The 
American laborer is the descendant of the man who 



OPPORTUNITIES AND RESULTS 353 

fought for American liberty as is the employer, or he is of 
foreign birth or descent, as is the man who seeks to "pro- 
tect" him. Why then, should such claims longer be in- 
dulged as pretexts upon which to base schemes of plun- 
der ? When it is made possible for workers and consumers 
to protect themselves all that can be done in this line 
stands accomplished. Let labor be freed, not protected. 
Freed from imposition of unjust taxes, of restrictions on 
freedom to labor. Unjust taxes always go to unjust 
causes and restricted opportunities form the basis of in- 
dustrial slavery. 

The present union of masters with workers is one of 
profit on one side and bread on the other. Not an exalting 
union ; not one from which blessings are to follow. The 
relation of landholders to the users of land who have no 
title to it, is even less lovely. The only connection is rent. 
On behalf of the landholder it is rent receiving, on the part 
of the user it is rent payment, a tie of rent, and more rent 
if possible, but always rent. It is strange that men should 
enter into relations so bare of beauty, so dry of the milk 
of human kindness. It is strange that in this day such 
absurd, unequal and unwarranted relations should exist 
between men who might be wiser on both sides and men 
who might be stronger. It is strange that of a social and 
business condition existing in an age we in our conceit 
call dark, only the hard features should survive. 

In obligations to government, financial as well as per- 
sonal, exemptions should favor the weak. In personal 
service the physically unfit are not called to act. Our 
financial burdens rest upon the workers, the least able, 
making comparative exemptions to the rich. Leaving out 
the question of taxation for government purposes the 
deeper wrong is comprehended in the order that drives 
us to our present system. The natural and reasonable 
23 



354 THE LABORER AND HIS HIRE 

source of taxation being appropriated to personal gains 
we are driven to something else. 

A tax on land, regulated by its value to the state, its 
ability to meet the demands of humanity, would destroy 
all occasion for other taxes: This would lift the tax 
weight from improvements, the result of labor. It would 
remove the barriers to universal prosperity, insuring re- 
wards to the toiler. Happy and profitable life as the com- 
mon heritage to coming generations this would make pos- 
sible. To take away a certain amount of a man's wages 
every year as a fine for building and possessing a house 
discourages human effort to better the condition of the 
race; by this method of meeting government expenses 
labor is made to bear far too much of the weight, and for 
the privilege of creating the wealth forms upon which 
taxes are paid to government, is most unjustly made tribu- 
tary to the opulence of private monopoly. Action, work ; 
the natural state, the destiny and purpose of every valiant 
soul in this present world, — it seems a poor thing and a 
most unfortunate that we should be driven by the force 
of weak favoritism to tax this for the support of govern- 
ment, this, the best part of our material life. It seems 
an order not of heaven, an injustice of earth only that 
the conquerors, the brave who have at all times made the 
material progress of the race and fitted up the earth as 
an appropriate habitation for divine humanity, should be 
kept in bondage in gratification of the selfish purposes 
of human greed. 



The Neale Company's Publications 

Balzac, Honor e de, The Library Edition of the Novels 

The set comprises forty-two volumes, handsomely bound in 
buckram cloth, and includes Scenes of Parisian Life ; of Private 
Life ; of Military, Political, and Country Life, etc. 

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Bergen, Helen Corinne The Princess Adelaide 

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lines are passages of beauty." 

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Brake, Josephine Winf ield As it Happened 

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sensation ill the social, as well as the literary world, it will argue 
that dullness has become universal." 

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Drewry, William S* f Ph* D* 

The Southampton Insurrection 

The insurrection of the negroes in Southampton County, Va., 
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is a thorough study of the most important servile revolt on record. 
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been studied, but their effects upon slavery, the free negro, and 
their descendants of post-bellum days. 

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Fiske, Rev* A* S*, D* D* Ruth 

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strong and gentle courtesies of a gracious manhood. 

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Fiske, Rev* A* S. r D* D* Reason and Faith 

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r 

Garland, Rufus Cummins Zalea 

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Heaton, Augustus George 

The Heart of David, The Psalmist King 

This powerful drama in verse contains about twelve thousand 
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and Abagail," " David and Battesheba," and " David and Abis- 
hag." In their connected form, the four writings offer a com- 
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is to show not only the splendid qualities of his nature, but his 
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founded upon the love of David for the four women whose asso- 
ciation with his career is especially recorded in the Bible. 

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James, CoL Charles Joan of Arc 

Colonel James has presented in the form of drama in blank 
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result is a masterpiece. The action is stirring and commands the 
undivided attention of the reader throughout. 

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Johnson, Philander Chase Now-a-Day Poems 

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key, covering a wide range of style, and includes some serious 
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and in Europe from the columns of the Washington Evening 
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to " Now-a-Day Characters " and " Now-a-Day Colored Folks." 

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Johnson, Richard L* 

Niagara : Its History, Incidents, and Poetry- 
Niagara has inspired the finest descriptive poems in the 
English language, all of which are here collected, including 
poems by Henry Howard Brownell, William Dean Howells, 
Thomas Gold Appleton, Jose Maria Heredia, the Spanish poet ; 
Christopher Pearse Cranch, Col. Porter, Lydia H. Sigourney, A. 
S. Kidgely, James Silk Buckingham, John Gardner Calkins 
Brainard, Phcebe A. Hanaford, Lord Morpeth, Sir Thomas Moore, 
Willis Gaylord Clark, Martin F. Tupper, etc. 

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Johnston, CoL Richard Malcolm 

Autobiography of CoL Richard Malcolm Johnston 

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Golm Johnston. When we made the announcement that we had 
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with much surprise, even by the most intimate friends of Col. 
Johnston, for but few knew that he had written the biography of 
his eventful life. 

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Johnston, CoL Richard Malcolm 

Mr ♦ Billy Downs and His Likes 

Includes the stories, which by many are regarded as Colonel 
Johnston's best work, " A Bachelor's Counselings," " Parting from 
Sailor," " Two Administrations," " Almost a Wedding in Dooly 
District," " Something in a Name," and " Townes and their 
Cousins." 

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Joyce, CoL John A* Complete Poems 

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collection. In fact, fully half of the Complete Poems have never 
before been in print, and not a few of these may be counted 
among his best work. 

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Joyce, CoL John A* Oliver Goldsmith 

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doubt the best work Colonel Joyce has yet accomplished. 

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Kell, Capt* John Mcintosh 

Recollections of a Naval Life, Including the Cruise* 
of the C S* S. " Sumter n and * Alabama f> 

" On the honor roll of Confederate heroes there are few names 
that shine more brilliantly than that of Captain Kell, whose 
gallant record on the high seas during the war between the States 



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is rich in deeds of valor, which his countrymen delight to recall," 
says The Atlanta Constitution in reviewing Recollections of a Naval 
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masthead of his vessel, without fear and without flinching. In 
many respects it is the most important of the volumes which the 
Civil War has inspired. 

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Lee, George Hyde, M, D, What Was His Duty? 

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adding a special interest to the narrative. 

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Lee, George Hyde, M* D* Kith and Kin 

The action takes place in the cities of Washington and New 
York. Among the characters who contribute to the interest are 
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and others prominent in Washington official life. The story is 
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the extreme. 

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McLaughlin, N. Monroe The Last Man 

The historical background of this stirring and beautiful story 
of love is the period of the Civil War, and there is love enough 
to give color and warmth to the stirring adventures of the most 
interesting period in the history of the Eepublic. The style is 
easy and flowing, the situations full of dramatic interest, the 
characters vividly drawn, making a valuable contribution to the 
fiction of a period much neglected by recent novelists. 

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Mackall, S* Somervell Early Days of Washington 

Miss Mackall in the Early Days of Washington has written and 
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have, in consequence, a book of more than local interest. 

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Neale, Walter 

Autobiographies and Portraits of the President, 
Cabinet, Supreme Court, and Fifty-fifth Congress 

Completes the first two volumes of an endless history of the 
United States told by our statesmen and publicists in their own 
words — history by the makers of history. In the lives of the officers 
of our Government, executive, legislative, and judicial, is to be 
found the most authentic and valuable history of our country, of 
its institutions, customs, and development. It is the purpose of 
the publishers to issue supplementary volumes with each incom- 
ing Administration and Congress, which will embrace the auto- 
biographies and portraits of each of the new officers of the 
Government. 

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Neale, Walter American Statesmen 

A scrapbook of yarns and good stories gathered here and there 
on our public men — on those who hold office, those who hope 
to, and those who never will — taken from the newspapers, mag- 
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Newton, Watson J* Cupid and Creeds 

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<J> X Songs of the G* CX P* 

The contents of this volume have the merit of pungent time- 
liness, the force of vigorous expression, and the charm of polished 
verse. It is the only serious effort of recent years to revive English 
satire, once so potent, as a factor in popular thought and diversion. 
The style and character reveal the fact that they come from a 
practiced pen ; one whose recognition in other fields of composi- 
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Robinson, Philip A* Coin, Currency and Commerce 

Mr. Robinson's position is in line with sound financiers and 
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the interests variously affected by the standard of value. The 
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Shanklin, L M« The Laborer and His Hire 

The author's sympathies are entirely with the wage-earners, 
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the most interesting and important publication in this field that 
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Stimpson, Herbert Baird The Regeneration 

Miss Kate Mason Rowland, in The Richmond Times, writes : 
M Mr. Stimpson is another new writer from the sunny South of 

uch promise. * * * The Regeneration is written in charm- 
ing literary sylo, and its chivalric sentiments will make it very 
pleasing to the South and not at all offensive to the North." 

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Von Huldenfeld, Edmund, Baron Wucherer 
Vade-Mecum to the Dinner Table, 

or Handbook of Good Manners at Table 

An exceedingly valuable book for those traveling abroad. 
The authorized free translation from the German is by Mariane 
E. Dresden. 

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$2.00 a Year Single Number, 50c« 

The 

Conservative Review 

"The Leading Quarterly of America " 

i£m jtfrn d* 

* * * In make-up The Conservative Eeview reminds us 
of the staid and dignified British quarterlies. As in the case of 
the Quarterly, the Scottish Review, etc., most of the articles are 
based upon important new books. In the United States we have 
no other publication at present constructed precisely on these 
lines. In many features the Conservative reminds us of the 
North American of a half century ago. — Eeview of Reviews. 

It is a strong, dignified, and scholarly publication, and makes 
a welcome addition to the periodical literature of the time, filling 
a gap that has long been deplored by those who felt the need of 
an American review, treating serious subjects in a scholarly way 
and devoting to the discussion of public questions the space re- 
quired for their adequate presentation, without regard to the 
popular demand for something in the lighter vein. * * * It 
is seldom that a magazine of any kind or of any country is able 
to present such an unusually varied and interesting list of con- 
tents as this second number of The Conservative Review. It 
is decidedly deserving of encouragement. It is high in aim, 
though tral in purpose, and gives at least the type of an American 
review fit to rank with the British publications of similar propor- 
tions and tone. — Editorial from Baltimore Evening News, 



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